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

Tue Feb 9 23:40:13 CET 2016

Physically based rendering is coming in full force and most if not all
artists professional or hobby have to just adopt it or get left in the
past. Opengl Vulkan is coming and eventually you adapt to it or die. One
thing I don't get about this back and fourth is the idea that this less
evil is better than that greater evil. Why not live w/o the evil. There
will always be stragglers, there's still people out there writing programs
with fixed pipeline opengl. There are people still running windows XP out
there who do not want to upgrade to linux. It's my opinion that no matter
how long you wait, it will never be a good time to switch to something new.

FBX export in blender works, leave it where it is and move on to something
new. As far as which new format to use, that can be up for debate but the
idea that you're still asking should we or shouldn't we move past FBX is
quite a shame. Chicken or the egg problem, artists won't just get up ad
adopt something new. I'd say implement one of the new formats and keep it
moving.

Best,
Owen

On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 6:30 AM, metalliandy <metalliandy666 at googlemail.com>
wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> I have mixed feelings about this to be honest. While I don't agree with
> the way FBX is licensed (it should be open sourced ASAP,  IMHO), the fact
> remains that it is still the current interchange format and will be for the
> foreseeable future, no matter who owns the standard or how much we dislike
> it.
>
> I would hate for this to turn into another crusade against Autodesk, where
> we all just start blindly sharpening our pitchforks and blindly head into
> the foray, because such things only end up hurting our users in the long
> run. Yes, it would be awesome to support other formats such as glTF,
> Alembic and USD, but it wont mean anything if no one else within the games
> industry uses them too. We would just end up with a Blender only pipeline
> and "Blender is for Blender users" crap that flew around a few years ago.
> Such protectionism can only hurt Blender as you are effectively working
> against de facto industry standards rather than with them. Having a program
> that can't talk to other software restricts the use of said software, and
> studios are simply not going to adopt Blender only pipelines so a competent
> interchange format is essential.
>
> Yes, standards do change, but this takes a *very* long time to happen.
> Remember when Collada was meant to be the new standard? Look what happened
> there...
> As of now no other format (aside from the ageing and less feature rich
> OBJ) comes close the the level of industry support that FBX has & even
> Pixologic, who have been the bastion of OBJ support (even extending the
> format to support vertex colours), have recently implemented FBX support in
> the latest version of ZBrush to aim interop. between applications.
>
> This is unfortunate of course, but unless we want to alienate Blender from
> the rest of the 3d world stopping support for it would be a bad move.
> Blender has made so many giant leaps forward in terms of gamedev use over
> the past few years and having FBX slowly break over the next few years will
> do nothing but hurt Blender usability and reputation. Most people simply
> don't understand or care that we can't use the FBX SDK within Blender and
> will simply assume that Blender is buggy.
>
> It's not just about current users either...we have to think about future
> users that are migrating over to Blender from Max/Maya who expect something
> like FBX to just work. If they cannot simply load an FBX into Blender
> without issue, they will also assume that Blender is buggy as it can't even
> support FBX correctly.
>
> Next we have to think about people who use Blender on a professional level
> too for things like freelance work. 80% of the time I get meshes for
> texturing/baking from clients the low poly & block out mesh part of the
> asset are in the FBX format. It would be extremely embarrassing and
> unprofessional of me to request OBJ in the place of FBX and potentially
> jeopardise the possibility of future work with new/especially picky clients
> (FWIW, I used to use FBX converter to go from FBX to OBJ, but this is
> ironically no longer supported by Autodesk).
>
> In addition to the above we also have the problem of fixed pipelines. It
> is usual for studios to define a pipeline during pre-production and
> maintain it rigorously at the low level at least until the current project
> ends. Many studios also run staggered production of multiple projects using
> the R&D & pipelines of the previous "lead" project and if we assume that a
> project will last between 2-4 years we are probably talking between 3-6
> years before pipeline changes are considered for something as integral as
> interchange formats. Granted this is more likely a problem for AAA studios
> and not many of them use Blender as a main tool, but they do have
> freelancers who use Blender, which will be a problem for them. It will also
> rule out Blender for such studios if they were ever to think about moving
> over (assuming they use FBX ofc.)
>
> Ignoring the problems with FBX isn't going to help anything really as the
> problems will only get worse over time and there is nothing we can
> realistically use to replace it with.
>
> I guess that I find it hard to see how anyone can seriously think that
> maintaining FBX is a waste of time because such support is essential for
> the many people that use FBX on a day to day basis. Wouldn't it only be a
> waste of time if no one used it?
>
> Cheers,
>
> -Andy
>
>
> On 09/02/2016 19:33, Piotr Arlukowicz wrote:
>
> Standards can change, and the sooner, the better. World should be open and
> friendly, not closed and cluttered with crap from huge companies. As I
> don't have to use FBX, I vote against it every possible time. Let's make
> something valuable instead of supporting those bastards. They are famous
> but their so called standards are nothing more than bad habits. Yes, I
> blame autodesk and the others for being closed, money greedy and unfriendly
> to the community. That's mine five cents.
>
> pio
>
> Piotr
>  Arlukowicz, BFCT
>
> *YT: /user/piotao?feature=guide*
>  *FB:* */polskikursblendera* *TW:*
> */piotao *
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>
>
>
> 2016-02-09 13:16 GMT-05:00 Bastien Montagne <montagne29 at wanadoo.fr>:
>
>> 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> 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>
>>> 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/>
>>> 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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>>> Bf-gamedev at blender.org
>>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-gamedev
>>>
>>
>>
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