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

Tue Feb 9 19:16:22 CET 2016

Well, once more time: I do not ask to drop FBX, I ask to stop investing 
time in it. Means we would keep it working in current state, but not try 
to add/support/fix new things.

Le 09/02/2016 18:18, Cremuss a écrit :
> Hi,
>
> As evil as FBX is, and I totally understand why you think it's a 
> dead-end (and it is, truly), I feel it is a necessary evil for now.
>
> Many of us pro Game Artists rely on FBX file format because there's 
> simply no other choice yet. I export a lot of animated stuff to UE4 
> and Unity, and dropping FBX support in Blender would mean I'd most 
> certainly have to buy and use a proprietary 3D software to work, which 
> is a shame.
>
> A minimal FBX support would still work for me though, because, 
> /personally/, I just need to be able to /export/ animated meshes and 
> armatures, mostly to Unity and UDK/UE4. So dropping support of the FBX 
> importer, as well as the support of lights, cameras and any other 
> fancy stuff wouldn't affect me or my work at all. But that's just me.
>
> However, I'm all for supporting an open format if it will allow me to 
> export animated data to Unity/UDK/UE4 by the time we fully drop FBX 
> support. But as far as I know, there's no open FBX yet :/
>
> I know Unreal has donated to the Blender Foundation to work on the FBX 
> exporter so they seems open and friendly to me. Maybe there's a way to 
> talk to them and see what kind of options we have.
>
> Anyway, that's just my honest opinion!:)
>
> Le 09/02/2016 17:49, Fillippe Chiniara a écrit :
>>
>> I think its a bad move for the game developers that use blender, you 
>> would abandon all of us because fbx is THE standard for game dev , we 
>> cant use anything else with the modern engines, at least nothing with 
>> the same level of support.
>>
>> On Feb 9, 2016 14:42, "Bastien Montagne" <montagne29 at wanadoo.fr 
>> <mailto:montagne29 at wanadoo.fr>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi,
>>
>>     So, lately there's been a lot of FBX-related issues reported to our
>>     tracker. Most of those are either:
>>     - Known (half-)broken things (like cameras/lights orientation
>>     issues),
>>     over which I do not intend to spend more time, since those are not
>>     critical features to support imho.
>>     - Broken corner-cases in an area that globally works rather well
>>     (thinking about skeletons here).
>>     - Mysterious third-party applications-related issues (scaling,
>>     skeletons
>>     again, etc.), that is, bugs that show with one app but not another.
>>
>>     I think later point is a good demonstration that FBX itself is a
>>     failure
>>     and a dead horse - if even rather big and serious companies like
>>     Unreal
>>     or Unity cannot get a reliable FBX importer working using
>>     official FBX
>>     SDK, then how are we supposed to do it without even that SDK?
>>
>>     Further more:
>>     - In past two years a lot of time and energy was invested (lost)
>>     in FBX.
>>     - </rant> I’m just dead sick of that format, of hitting any possible
>>     table corner when trying to walk my way in that non-sensible
>>     pitch black
>>     box, etc. </rant>
>>     - Knowledge I gained of this format and its evolution is **not**
>>     encouraging at all (stupid things like supporting two different and
>>     complex transform systems [3DS max and Maya ones, btw ;) ], a
>>     very weird
>>     inconsistency at binary level, etc.). I do not have any feeling
>>     this is
>>     a sane format, nor that it is evolving in a sane direction. It
>>     seems to
>>     be defined a bit as needs arise, piling up new stuff over old
>>     ones, etc.
>>     To summarize: no clear design behind it, and a very dirty way of
>>     handling new versions of it.
>>
>>     So I would claim to stop relying on and developing it. It would
>>     not mean
>>     we just remove it from Blender, but think it’s time to switch to
>>     something more modern and open - am aware of at least to possible
>>     alternatives, which could even be quite complementary.
>>
>>     I) glTF
>>     Promoted by Khronos group (https://www.khronos.org/gltf), it aims at
>>     being the open exchange format for games (from simple asset to
>>     complete
>>     scene description).
>>     Think it’s still very new stuff, not much widely used yet, but it
>>     seems
>>     to have some support from several major companies (including
>>     Microsoft
>>     and even - rofl - Autodesk, see http://gltf.autodesk.io/).
>>
>>     II) USD
>>     Promoted by Pixar (http://graphics.pixar.com/usd/), it aims at being
>>     some kind of generic pipeline format for CG studios (it also has
>>     integration of Alembic e.g.).
>>     I have no idea of its acceptance currently, but sounds like it
>>     could be
>>     a valuable option for our 2.8 'pipeline/inter-application
>>     exchange' goal?
>>
>>     (as a side note, interesting to see that those two have a similar
>>     approach, they are not monolithic files but rather a combination of
>>     binary data and textual descriptions…)
>>
>>     Anyway, those are very early reflections, would like to get your
>>     feelings about those two formats/projects (or others you may have in
>>     mind! ;) ), but I’m feeling much more enthusiast at the idea of
>>     spending
>>     time on modern, open-designed (or at least, open-specified) formats,
>>     than on piece of proprietary crap!
>>
>>     Again, even if we end up deciding we stop trying to fully support
>>     FBX as
>>     our main exchange format, it would keep being supported in its
>>     current
>>     status at least for one or two years - just I would not try to add
>>     support for new versions (2016 one seems to have some
>>     incompatibilities
>>     with our code already), nor would try to understand and fix more
>>     stuff
>>     in that format.
>>
>>     And that’s a long enough mail, thanks for reading it!
>>     Bastien
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>>
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