[Bf-committers] The future of FBX and/or other formats in Blender

Owen Hogarth II gurenchan at gmail.com
Fri Feb 12 09:42:29 CET 2016


Would there be anyone against using the pixar USD format:
http://graphics.pixar.com/usd/

After looking at it, it seems pretty robust, the format is open like what
was said previously and best of all it looks like it can fit right on top
of blender's in my opinion.

So will this list continue to sit around a campfire and look at the guys
around you or are you guys willing to take concrete steps to improve
blender's exporters?

Best,
Owen

On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 10:29 PM, William Culver <wculver at cedeon.co.uk>
wrote:

> I love you guys.  I've spent 8 years invested in Blender with my company.
> I fight so hard as an advocate, all interns come to me with Maya/Max
> training and I make them learn Blender.  I'm constantly on job sites and
> 99% of the time there I'm the only employer in the whole of the UK looking
> for people with blender skills.
>
> Point being, us Blenderers are massive outsiders in the industry already..
> and despite all the technological agreement, and sound argument from
> Bastien RE the FBX issue, I'm really dismayed with Blender right now.
>
> I feel like Autodesk is laughing at you guys giving up with FBX... You're
> playing right into their hands and have just given them another small
> victory by validating all of their efforts to make the spec hard to access
> in the first place.  Please blender devs, I know FBX sucks and i know we
> should be pushing for better and more open file formats but *please *don't
> alienate us further by having bit rot take away FBX.  Its too soon to stop
> dev when there's little momentum for industry change and so much weight
> behind FBX.  I know you are going to argue that stopping dev on FBX *is*
> the momentum for change but come on guys we are tiny compared to Autodesk..
> FBX is a juggernaut and every single one of the MANY wanna-be game devs is
> going to spend 5 minutes with blender and then hop straight over to Maya LT
> unless FBX continues to work.  You're going to indirectly make Autodesk
> MORE money with this decision and i can't think anything worse than that.
> IMHO.
>
> I know the format sucks and we have to reverse it to the point it could
> break tomorrow anyway.  I think you greatly underestimate its necessity.. I
> can point straight to more than 5 teenagers I know that downloaded blender
> to make a game asset for UE4 and that's just my first hand knowledge.   I
> think FBX export is one of the earliest things one does when dabbling in
> blender and first impressions count.
>
> Of course no one can blame Bastien for having enough and I thank you for
> your hard work to date.  Please *please *put *some* continued resources
> into FBX though Ton, we desperately need something equivalent in its place
> before the bit rot starts to take hold.
>
> TL;DR.. I agree with this at a development/technical level... on a
> political level you guys have scared the bajeezus out of me.
>
>
> Thanks Blender, you're the best.
>
> Regards,
>
> William Culver
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 1:21 PM, Juan Linietsky <reduzio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Ton,
> >
> > Here's some facts you are missing:
> >
> > -My Collada exporter works with Unity, Cryengine and imports correctly in
> > Maya/Max too via OpenCollada plugin.
> > -My Collada importer opens perfectly any scenes exported from Maya and
> Max
> > (Using OpenCollada plugin), XSI and Lightwave. Of course it also opens
> > scenes from my Collada exporter.
> >
> > You are free to test this yourself.
> >
> > The reason this failed consistently in Blender is because you guys didn't
> > care about having experienced developers spend time making it work.
> > Had Campbell Barton worked on it as he did on FBX, Collada would work
> > wonderfully. I just used his same approach to make my Collada exporter,
> > using OpenCollada library was a huge mistake.
> >
> >   Still, I understand your concern and it is true that Collada was
> > originally devised as an exchange format. But if you read the
> specification
> > you will realize that, with each version,  it quickly migrated to a
> format
> > used to export assets for game engines. As an exchange format between 3D
> > DCCs it's severely limited.
> >
> >   So my proposal is the following:
> >
> > -Deprecate current Collada export support in Blender and replace it for
> > mine. Change the focus so it works well with game engines as a priority.
> > Having an alternative to FBX for this is a lot more important, both for
> > commercial game engines and (most vitally) for OSS game engines.
> >   If the focus is for DCC exchange, we know it will never work properly
> for
> > any use case and it sucks as a format for that anyway.
> >
> > -Deprecate current Collada import suppot in Blender and work together
> with
> > me to implement my library, which has extremely high compatibility.
> >
> > -Find a more useful long-term solution for asset exchange between Blender
> > and other 3D DCCs. I don't think even FBX is up to this task. If it was
> up
> > to me to decide, I think the best solution would be to implement a
> > dedicated .blend importer/exporter plugin for Maya, and make sure every
> > single use case works. From there, you can go to any other Autodesk
> > software using Maya Import/Export.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 9:13 AM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Juan,
> > >
> > > I think we mix up different use cases.
> > >
> > > - COLLADA was meant to be a cross platform 3d exchange format. Even
> > > Khronos recognizes that this goal has issues. COLLADA has design flaws,
> > it
> > > is disputed, very hard to get to work.
> > >
> > > - Many Blender developers have put time on getting COLLADA exchange to
> > > work. With Python, with OpenCollada, with own C++ code. We tried a lot,
> > > discussions go back to 2004 already. In days of work, it had similar
> (or
> > > more) attention as developers gave to FBX.
> > >
> > > - You made a COLLADA exporter to work as native format for Godot. That
> is
> > > cool, COLLADA works fine that way.
> > >
> > > What we tried is something else, it is 3D exchange: a format to work
> in a
> > > mixed tools pipeline. That means Maya to Blender and back. And that is
> > what
> > > FBX currently offers to the industry. COLLADA could have offered it
> too,
> > > but after 12 years we better conclude it won't work for this.
> > >
> > > Conclusion: Blender can just get multiple COLLADA exporters to "save as
> > > Godot" or "save as 2ndlife" or "save as Maya", for as much developers
> > wish
> > > to support that.
> > >
> > > Laters,
> > >
> > > -Ton-
> > >
> > > --------------------------------------------------------
> > > Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
> > > Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute
> > > Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > On 10 Feb, 2016, at 21:41, Juan Linietsky <reduzio at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Guys I'm sorry. I've seen this situation happening over and over to
> no
> > > end
> > > > for more than a decade.
> > > > How about some self-criticism from Blender instead of blaming
> Autodesk?
> > > >
> > > > If you guys really had cared about open standards and getting along
> > well
> > > > with game engines, you would have done the following:
> > > >
> > > > 1) Make sure you export proper Collada. The specification is pretty
> > > clear.
> > > > 2) Push game engines to fix their importers.
> > > >
> > > > Blender support for Collada has always been a disaster. There was
> never
> > > any
> > > > will to fix it.
> > > >
> > > > -I originally insisted against using OpenCollada due to the huge
> binary
> > > > bloat, and the fact the spec is pretty simple.  You guys wanted to go
> > > with
> > > > it.
> > > > -The exporter was huge and full of bugs. I insisted that a lot of
> > > features
> > > > missing in the spec needed to be implemented, was ignored.
> > > > -Meanwhile, all the missing Collada features were implemented in FBX,
> > > such
> > > > as blend shapes, proper keyframe baking. constraint baking, exporting
> > all
> > > > actions, etc.
> > > > -I wrote for you guys a proper Collada exporter in a few lines of
> Code
> > > that
> > > > supported the full spec, you guys refused it to add it to mainline
> > > Blender.
> > > > -I insisted, the answer was "Yeah we can put it at some development
> > repo
> > > > and if anyone cares about it we move it to mainline". Of course,
> > everyone
> > > > was using FBX , so who would care about Collada?
> > > >
> > > > Now you cry that FBX is evil and blame Unreal, Unity and Autodesk.
> > > > Now you complain that there are not any open standards being pushed.
> > > >
> > > > You know what guys? cry me a river..
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 2:45 PM, Daniel Stokes <kupomail at gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> With regards to glTF exporting, we have a glTF exporter as part of
> the
> > > Real
> > > >> Time Engine addon project [1]. The exporter[2] output passes
> > > validation[3]
> > > >> for the glTF 1.0 (not sure if draft or final) specification. It is
> > > >> currently missing animation support, and could have better support
> for
> > > >> materials and textures. This weekend I will move this exporter out
> of
> > > the
> > > >> project it is currently in and in to its own repo so it can more
> > easily
> > > be
> > > >> used for creating a simple glTF export addon.
> > > >>
> > > >> [1] https://github.com/Kupoman/BlenderRealtimeEngineAddon/
> > > >> [2]
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > >
> >
> https://github.com/Kupoman/BlenderRealtimeEngineAddon/blob/develop/brte/converters/blendergltf.py
> > > >> [3]
> > > >>
> > >
> https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/tree/1.0-final/specification/schema
> > > >>
> > > >> Regards,
> > > >> Daniel Stokes
> > > >>
> > > >> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 8:20 AM, Fabio Pesari <fabio at pesari.eu>
> > wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>> On 02/10/2016 04:44 PM, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
> > > >>>> A crowd-funder for 1 feature only is very risky. What precisely do
> > we
> > > >>> define to fund? Who would crowdfund a developer to just fix bugs
> and
> > > >>> maintenance for 2 years? I doubt people would pay for that. I
> > wouldn't
> > > >> even
> > > >>> know where to find such a coder...
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> For 2.8 we can do a big fund raiser, and include this on the work
> > > >>> planning. I think professionals rather see us to keep working on
> the
> > > >> whole
> > > >>> pipeline, starting with good PBR shader editing in viewports.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Why don't you do a fundraiser organized like this:
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Feature X   [---]
> > > >>> Feature Y   [---------]
> > > >>> Feature Z   [------]
> > > >>> Maintenance [-----]
> > > >>> Marketing   [--]
> > > >>> =========================================
> > > >>> Total       [---------------------------]
> > > >>>
> > > >>> When people donate, they can choose where to put their money and if
> > > they
> > > >>> don't, it goes to "Maintenance" by default, so most donors will
> fund
> > > >>> that. Also, any excess money from the implementation of other
> > features
> > > >>> also goes to "Maintenance".
> > > >>>
> > > >>> It'd be even better if there were set goals for each feature (for
> > > >>> example, $40k for Feature X, and of course no limit on
> > "Maintenance"),
> > > >>> so people would know how much they have to donate in order to make
> > sure
> > > >>> the feature they need is implemented (with a disclaimer, of
> course).
> > > >>>
> > > >>> I think a lot more people are willing to donate if they know
> exactly
> > > >>> where their money is going.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> I think generic fundraisers often fail because there aren't set
> > > >>> objectives. The FSF recently managed to reach their goal because
> they
> > > >>> set a reasonable one ($450k), and they aren't nearly as popular as
> > > >>> Blender (you could say the industry hates them).
> > > >>> _______________________________________________
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> > > >>> Bf-committers at blender.org
> > > >>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
> > > >>>
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> > > >>
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