[Bf-committers] Built-in support for free formats (OpenGEX and glTF)

Fabio Pesari fabio at pesari.eu
Wed Feb 10 12:42:31 CET 2016


After reading the thread about FBX, I realized that since Blender is
free software, it would be good if it encouraged using free formats
instead of proprietary ones like FBX, which are always going to require
time-consuming reverse engineering efforts.

I know at least two engine-independent formats which have fully
available specifications: glTF ([0]) and OpenGEX ([1]).

I think both were designed to fix the various issues COLLADA had; glTF
is JSON-based and OpenGEX uses its own typed free format called
"OpenDDL" (example at [2]).

OpenGEX already has a Blender exporter which is licensed under the CC
BY-SA 3.0 ([3]), while I couldn't find anything Blender-related for glTF
(but being JSON-based, writing a Python plugin for it should be trivial).

I think including built-in support for them in Blender would be a good
way to encourage users to adopt something else than both proprietary
formats and free (but crappy) COLLADA, and for the Blenders devs to have
less headaches (since they would just have to follow the specs rather
than reverse-engineer obscure formats).

[0]:
https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/blob/master/specification/README.md
[1]: http://opengex.org/OpenGEX.1.1.2.pdf
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Game_Engine_Exchange#Example
[3]: http://opengex.org/OpenGex-Blender-Script.zip


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