[Soc-2012-dev] AssimpFBX Progress Report 12

[Alexander Gessler]

Hi all!


What I did this week
====================

- I tracked down some smaller issues and fixed them. Supporting more
rotation orders solved some armature problems, but not all.

- I finally added support for reading binary FBX files! I had a bit
delay on this, at first I started from scratch with a different design
to decouple the conversion part of the importer from the part where the
difference between ascii and binary matters (i.e. the parsing phase). I
got also delayed because binary fbx files do employ a compression scheme
for some of their parts (I didn't realize that before).


Next week
=========

After talking to Tom, we set the remaining priorities as
 - get armature conversion as far as possible
 - check compatibility with the exporter script

I will work on those things over the weekend and during the first two
days of the next week, after which I will be away from 15th to 18th
september.

I will finish up some supporting documentation on my wiki.

There are also some minor fixes that I would like to get done in order
to reach a solid status with the end of GSoC.

Bye, Alex


On 8/3/2012 8:27 PM, Alexander Gessler wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> 
> What I did this week
> =====================
> 
> Spent around 10 hours debugging some bones but they're still not correct
> (mostly two issues: the armature in blender is deformed and the original
> bones in assimp are sometimes mirrored with respect to the original fbx
> file / respectively the way how fbx converter/viewer plays them back)
> 
> Had some exams on tuesday/wednesday and took a day off afterwards to
> finish up something else :-)
> 
> Implemented binary reading. I got a first binary file read a few minutes
> ago, so you an expect this feature to hit bratwurst during the weekend.
> 
> 
> Next week
> =========
> 
> Actually you can paste here the ongoing todos from last week.
> 
> 
> No real problems - it is not unexpected that animations/skinning would
> be tricky to get right. The positive feedback from BA.org confirms the
> importer is on the right track to being useful.
> 
> 
> Bye, Alex
> 
> 
> On 7/28/2012 2:55 AM, Alexander Gessler wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>>
>> tl;dr version
>> =============
>>
>> Worked on animation import. Got some basic skinning tests imported
>> correctly, but some quirks in the converter cause major screw up
>> in most cases :-)
>>
>>
>> What I did this week
>> ====================
>>
>> - devised a scheme how to transfer fbx animations seamlessly to blender
>> (and back again some day) and implemented it. Things are complicated
>> because fbx has a relatively complex node transformation chain that
>> doesn't match blender's, nor assimp's. The updated importer generates
>> additional nodes to keep the original transformations and tags them with
>> special names so the exporter can undo this transformation. It took a
>> lot of time to implement this, since we're not only talking about nodes
>> but also about the animations associated therewith. This scheme kicks in
>> for nearly all animated fbx files I have for testing.
>>
>> - implemented a fallback scheme to make sure files that only use basic
>> stuff (i.e. rotation, translation, scaling) don't get their scene
>> hierarchy busted up for no reason.
>>
>> - REed the binary file format.
>>
>> - Got some feedback on BA.org
>>
>>
>> Next week
>> =========
>>
>> - More work on skinning
>>
>> - Implement binary file format
>>
>> - Implement import option UI in Blender
>>
>> - Various fixes, tweaks etc
>>
>>
>> Problems
>> ========
>>
>> None
>>
>> Bye, Alex
>>
>> PS:
>> http://www.greentoken.de/download/bratwurst_assimp_fbx_r49165_win32.zip
>> is a win2 bit bratwurst build from the beginning of the last week.
>>
>