<p dir="ltr">I think its a bad move for the game developers that use blender, you would abandon all of us because fbx is THE standard for game dev , we cant use anything else with the modern engines, at least nothing with the same level of support.</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 9, 2016 14:42, "Bastien Montagne" <<a href="mailto:montagne29@wanadoo.fr">montagne29@wanadoo.fr</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi,<br>
<br>
So, lately there's been a lot of FBX-related issues reported to our<br>
tracker. Most of those are either:<br>
- Known (half-)broken things (like cameras/lights orientation issues),<br>
over which I do not intend to spend more time, since those are not<br>
critical features to support imho.<br>
- Broken corner-cases in an area that globally works rather well<br>
(thinking about skeletons here).<br>
- Mysterious third-party applications-related issues (scaling, skeletons<br>
again, etc.), that is, bugs that show with one app but not another.<br>
<br>
I think later point is a good demonstration that FBX itself is a failure<br>
and a dead horse - if even rather big and serious companies like Unreal<br>
or Unity cannot get a reliable FBX importer working using official FBX<br>
SDK, then how are we supposed to do it without even that SDK?<br>
<br>
Further more:<br>
- In past two years a lot of time and energy was invested (lost) in FBX.<br>
- </rant> I’m just dead sick of that format, of hitting any possible<br>
table corner when trying to walk my way in that non-sensible pitch black<br>
box, etc. </rant><br>
- Knowledge I gained of this format and its evolution is **not**<br>
encouraging at all (stupid things like supporting two different and<br>
complex transform systems [3DS max and Maya ones, btw ;) ], a very weird<br>
inconsistency at binary level, etc.). I do not have any feeling this is<br>
a sane format, nor that it is evolving in a sane direction. It seems to<br>
be defined a bit as needs arise, piling up new stuff over old ones, etc.<br>
To summarize: no clear design behind it, and a very dirty way of<br>
handling new versions of it.<br>
<br>
So I would claim to stop relying on and developing it. It would not mean<br>
we just remove it from Blender, but think it’s time to switch to<br>
something more modern and open - am aware of at least to possible<br>
alternatives, which could even be quite complementary.<br>
<br>
I) glTF<br>
Promoted by Khronos group (<a href="https://www.khronos.org/gltf" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.khronos.org/gltf</a>), it aims at<br>
being the open exchange format for games (from simple asset to complete<br>
scene description).<br>
Think it’s still very new stuff, not much widely used yet, but it seems<br>
to have some support from several major companies (including Microsoft<br>
and even - rofl - Autodesk, see <a href="http://gltf.autodesk.io/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://gltf.autodesk.io/</a>).<br>
<br>
II) USD<br>
Promoted by Pixar (<a href="http://graphics.pixar.com/usd/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://graphics.pixar.com/usd/</a>), it aims at being<br>
some kind of generic pipeline format for CG studios (it also has<br>
integration of Alembic e.g.).<br>
I have no idea of its acceptance currently, but sounds like it could be<br>
a valuable option for our 2.8 'pipeline/inter-application exchange' goal?<br>
<br>
(as a side note, interesting to see that those two have a similar<br>
approach, they are not monolithic files but rather a combination of<br>
binary data and textual descriptions…)<br>
<br>
Anyway, those are very early reflections, would like to get your<br>
feelings about those two formats/projects (or others you may have in<br>
mind! ;) ), but I’m feeling much more enthusiast at the idea of spending<br>
time on modern, open-designed (or at least, open-specified) formats,<br>
than on piece of proprietary crap!<br>
<br>
Again, even if we end up deciding we stop trying to fully support FBX as<br>
our main exchange format, it would keep being supported in its current<br>
status at least for one or two years - just I would not try to add<br>
support for new versions (2016 one seems to have some incompatibilities<br>
with our code already), nor would try to understand and fix more stuff<br>
in that format.<br>
<br>
And that’s a long enough mail, thanks for reading it!<br>
Bastien<br>
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</blockquote></div>