[Bf-committers] Importing Assets: FBX VS Collada

[Chad Fraleigh]

On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 11:29 PM, Toni Alatalo <toni at playsign.net> wrote:

> @Chad yes that is possible, it was discussed on IRC the other day and
> Ton dismissed (I think sanely) due to it being too difficult for
> people to install the separate converter (for FBX for example) due to
> the licenses preventing the distribution of the FBX SDK together with
> Blender.
>

So it isn't possible/not trivial to have an automatic installer that (upon
initiation by the user) downloads and installs the convertor and does the
SDK license acceptance and downloads and installs that also? And would
there be any GPL conflicts with having that bootstrap download/installer
script bundled with blender that does it on request (maybe just a pseudo
add-on that does when "enabled").

One of my pre-installed computers did that where Skype (and I think so
other software) wasn't installed by default, but there was a program menu
item that would install the first time it was used. And as far as those
users having to accept a license.. that isn't really any different than
accepting their OS license or other apps, as long as it is not directly
linked to any GPL code (or GPL code linked to it -- the converter being
BSD/MIT based or something).

It's just from some of the messages in the list, I got the feeling that
collada might had some issues (on long term support, or data mappings).
Maybe the external SDK route could [potentially] just be a usable stop-gap
solution while collada work is being refined, and/or enough RE'd FBX
knowledge is gained that it could be done well directly. It might even help
the RE effort, since then the SDK output of blender data could be more
quickly/easily inspected.


-Chad