When combining meshes with cats for some reason shape keys are not all preserved.

[AraHaan]

For example let's say some specific shape keys are getting nuked, after that it causes a different way of exporting to nuke all shape keys.

I would use the cats fbx exporter but for some reason it does not work well for my use case but https://github.com/EdyJ/blender-to-unity-fbx-exporter does with the correct scale, and rotations on the model. However, due to using cats to merge meshes with shape keys, that exporter nukes ALL of THEM. There is an existing issue about it, however I am trying to use cats to merge these meshes on one of my models (each with shape keys):

• Ears (animal like)

• Hair

• Head (that above meshes hides the human ears on the face)

  • These 3 meshes would then be merged into a new "Head" mesh that combines all 3 of the above. Of which some of the shape keys gets nuked when using cats (usually one should figure out common shapes and merge them together into the existing shape keys on each one)?

• Body

• Tail (animal like)

  • These 3 meshes also has shape keys, however when merged some of them get nuked when using cats. Same here, I would like if when merging those meshes that the shape keys could be considered in the merge at the same time where it would merge common ones together without decimating them (I have them on the list to not decimate those shape keys for good reason).

While there is an issue about it in the above exporter, simply using cats to merge meshes SHOULD not be breaking said exporter. Because of that, I think it might be a cats issue in my case. Using that exporter to export and then instinctively pressing save also PERMANENTLY nukes all of the shape keys for that blend file forcing me to START OVER again too.