[Bf-gamedev] Proposal to (try to) get better FBX support

[Forest Hale]

I will note that the criticism expressed toward Collada has primarily been on the difficult of parsing it directly in a game engine or conversion tool - specs tend to get MORE complicated with
revisions, not less, so this is a deadend approach if simplicity is a goal - and I believe that any source asset format (that is to say, fully featured for longterm maintenance in multiple modeling
apps, with multiple kinds of mesh data, camera paths and other scene parameters, etc) is going to be suboptimal for direct use in a game engine.

To cite an existing format that has the specific goal of being used in games, I'll point to the IQM format (Inter-Quake-Model - it originated from the Quake and Sauerbraten communities):
http://sauerbraten.org/iqm/

The iqm format has a blender plugin already, and is supported by a couple dozen games (on various engines) as a directly loaded format, its main feature is very consistent mesh formatting for optimal
draw order in games (a critical feature for real-world use - it is not a source asset storage format like Collada), with skeletal animation, custom vertex properties (certain ones are required but you
may add as many as you like), and is extensible.

I tend to favor piling on more features to an existing standard rather than making yet another one.

On 09/29/2014 06:26 PM, Andrews Magnoni wrote:
> Why not partnering with Khronos for making Collada better?
> 
> The last version of Collada was 1.5.0 in 2008!
> 
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 7:56 AM, Jens Christian Restemeier <jens.restemeier at gmail.com <mailto:jens.restemeier at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>         I do not think Collada is the way to go, I would even say it?s the other
>         direction we should take, if we were to work on a new format.
> 
> 
>     That is a noble goal, but the danger is that you end up with this: http://xkcd.com/927/
>      
> 
>         I would go to a minimalistic format. FBX is much better than collada on
>         this regard, but it is cluttered with an history of crapiness - and some
>         aspects (like its object transform model) are still crazy.
> 
>         An exchange format does not have to support every possible feature. An
>         exchange format has to be simple!
> 
> 
>     One idea I had was to define a strict subset of Collada that require least effort to map into an application without going crazy. That could be tagged in the header, and if a importer finds that
>     it goes through a fast/simple importer. If it isn't there the importer has to go through more general code.
> 
>     Example:
>     - fixed transform stack for nodes: Either a matrix, or a translate/rotate/scale stack for animations
>     - fixed vertex format for each channel and "simple" layout. Instead of supporting every simple buffer and data layout, only support a base format. (basically something like FBX.)
>     - fixed geometry format: for example support only convex polygon primitives without holes
>     - fixed order in which libraries are defined
>     - strict usage rules for the different name, id and sid tags and path references.
>     - fixed armature layout rules
> 
>     That way you have automatic support to import into other applications, and people could import and export the subset into their own code without spending ages supporting any odd configuration.
>      
> 
>         E.g. I like Wavefront .obj format - it is simple (even though Max
>         managed to break it with odd expectations on smoothgroups :/ )!
> 
> 
>     I'm not a fan, mainly because it splits materials into a separate file, and is limited by some old assumptions about how to work with geometry and shading info.
> 
>     Jens
> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> *Andrews Magnoni*
> *
> *
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