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

[Jens Christian Restemeier]

>
>
> My biggest concern about spending so many resources on FBX is that B-devs
> would be working on something that does not belong to Blender or any
> equivalent NFP organization. It belongs to Autodesk. Autodesk is free to
> break its own format however it likes and nullify all the work we do
> catching up, which is kind of scary. All FBX development on our end
> indirectly helps a company that is not helping us at all.
>
> Of course, our goal should be utility for users, not vindictiveness;
> improving FBX support may be our best move in the short term. But what
> about the long term?
>

I don't think they'll break the format intentionally. They can't really
control at which rate other applications update to a new version of the
SDK, so while they could introduce new features they can't do it in a way
that makes the files completely unusable outside of their apps.

The start would be a simple library that only loads and saves FBX, with a
thin layer on top that just abstracts out the worst problems with the
format, like simplifying the transform system and eliminating Euler angles
from public API.
The next version would support a second "Open Source" format that is not
owned by Autodesk, but can be read and written with exactly the same API.
So any application linking to the library would automatically be able to
load and save the new format. So in the short term you support FBX, but in
the long term you get lots of people to support a free format.
And if Autodesk really decides to nuke FBX you can still use the new open
format.

Jens
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