Alternative to FBX ?

So I’ve just read this http://www.blendernation.com/2014/09/07/developer-meeting-notes-september-7-2014/ and asking if there is an alternative to FBX sounds like giving up on the format support in Blender.

I personally understand developers’ frustration, however I don’t think dropping FBX support is a good idea.

I wonder if supporting ascii FBX is a clear cut deal. If so, there is official FBX converter from Autodesk, which can be used to convert ascii FBX into binary FBX.

Otherwise the only option is to export into some well documented model format, and write custom standalone app (closed source if needed to be), that will be maintained by BF, which would use official FBX SDK and convert that model/animation format exported from Blender into FBX.

Unfortunately there is no alternative to FBX. Every 3D suite and game engine out there uses FBX. Cut that off from Blender, and we are back into where it all began - no one would use Blender in production, where transfer of animation between Blender and a game engine is required (I assume Maya/Max/etc. have Alembic support, so when Blender has that too, there wouldn’t be any issues transferring scenes between 3D apps).

+1 Alembic support would be more than useful !

I remember Epic Games gave money in order to improve the fbx export

That’s another thing - dropping FBX I/O development will look pretty bad in Epic’s eyes. I would imagine it could tarnish BF’s reputation and will make it harder to obtain similar support.

If only Epic kept PSK/PSA around in UE4…

If Blender Foundation was payed by Epic for FBX development and then dropped FBX support it would amount to a breach of contract.

Not only it would guarantee that in future no commercial entity would trust BF as partner but most likely bring in Epic lawyers.

Welcome to the Real Life™ where you are payed to scratch your customer’s itches and you’d better accomplish the task you’ve been contracted for.

I guess they better hire a dedicated reverse engineer to keep up with FBX formats…

Now none of this really stops someone from getting what they need. In the past I have heard rumors of places that use FBX SDK with Blender, but of course that is done privately, behind closed doors.

I’m trying to learn as much as I can about making game assets for UE4, I have noticed some issues with fbx, where can I provide feedback?

Fairly sure there is no contract and Epic didn’t fund FBX development directly (some other companies did),
And even then, contracts to write software typically just include delivery of working software, not inclusion in every release of the application (indefinitely).

But nobody is suggesting dropping FBX.

@elindell - if you find bugs, submit reports to the bug-tracker,
provide feedback on the mailing list - http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-gamedev

I don’t know about contract, but Ton’s Tweet about Epic indicates their $10k was for FBX support.

It’s too bad there isn’t an open format that doesn’t suck.

Does it matter if it’s binary or ascii FBX for the purpose of format specs?

what i have thinking about is not just a new file format. more like a code that can be run on any dcc application.
thanks to llvm there is nearly in any application this interpreter available. when you can use example: clang as a fileformat like that you can have mesh data / procedural data and code in same format. the biggest challenge would be the api to get that in a solid shape. whats also possible is to add plugin functions in to it so you can add generators in the fileformat.

Alembic would be great, but it doesn’t seek to solve the same problems as FBX at all. Trying to find an alternative to FBX is a fool’s errand. If it existed, everyone would be using it, because nobody REALLY likes having to use/maintain FBX. And letting FBX slide into code abandonment simply isn’t an option for Blender. Failing to support FBX is the one surefire thing that would ensure that Blender remains a walled garden forever (or at least until someone else comes up with a better format that is adopted by the industry).

Have any considerations been made to making .blend readable by other packages? The BF creating official importers for the big external DCC packages may actually be easier than trying to reverse engineer FBX. The FBX importer in Blender completely fails with my Softimage rigs that I provided for testing, and I was more or less told that it was unlikely that they’d ever work with Blender because they’re non-traditional rigs. Seems like .blend could step up and become the interchange format people have been asking for, and because it’s basically just a full scene/memory dump file format it could be tweaked to handle all sorts of information.

FBX sucks but put it in the limbo with a “alternative” is not a solution at all for Blender game developers. Blender needs to adapt to the industry standards not the opposite. Today FBX is standard, no one doubt about it, but can not be forever. Keep a eye on the future is ok, but do not give up FBX when there’s no other way, today we just need it.

Thats donating towards a project, (which happens fairly often for us) - but not some binding contract.
Pointing this out since there were companies that funded initial FBX development.

Not really, once we got over the initial hump of figuring out how to decode&encode a valid FBX file (outside of Blender), binary is in fact much less hassle to deal with.

Nobody proposed this, likely its a comment from Ton,
after listening to devs complain about full FBX support being difficult.

OK, for people not exactly sure what was said, this is from the release notes.

Long discussion then happened about the state of FBX I/O. We need more help on testing here and gathering reference cases. Bastien Montagne has a (complex) patch waiting for review that might help things too.

The bf-gamedev list will get contacted to also evaluate if there’s no alternative for FBX… anyone we put on this task gets depressed mostly… Autodesk not releasing reliable format specs (and changing spec at will) makes fbx a real hard choice.

So, with the exact words available, I can see why people could see it representing BF looking to drop FBX. It certainly read that way to me and was a bit startling. Campbell seems to suggest above that this is just Ton commenting on the situation, but given Ton’s influence over development and flat out authority to determine who is paid to develop what, that’s not exactly the reassurance Campbell perhaps thinks it is. Not saying that it’s a foregone conclusion by any means, but comments from Ton about future direction in Blender development have a bit more weight than pretty much anyone else speaking about the subject.

For what it’s worth, painful though it might be, FBX is the file format for transferring stuff around in a game engine compatible manner. (Alembic really doesn’t help us much there). I’m by far not the only game developer who would be put out by the Blender Foundation dropping FBX development/support. There just isn’t another format that can be reliably used for transferring the data around we need (I’ve looked and tried the majority of them) and the developers of games & game engines are coming to rely on it more & more.

With companies funding it’s development, Steam donation monies being non-trivial in size (based on crowd-funding redonation), and even Epic throwing $10K at the Blender Foundation for that particular feature - I personally think dropping FBX development/support would trigger another Gooseberry game-dev debacle. However, at this point, it wouldn’t just be something Blender users remember. With other companies funding the initial development AND Epic throwing $10K at it - how the future development of FBX support is handled will be a visible indication as to whether future companies want to give money to the Foundation.

Please note, the above is just opinion and it might be much ado about nothing. Ton might have added a comment to the release notes without much though as to how it would be interpreted and it’s all a big misunderstanding. I fully accept that. My comments above are simply based on the possibility it’s not.

The bf-gamedev list will get contacted to also evaluate if there’s no alternative for FBX

As I understand it, it is a request for alternative options to FBX; likely asked for some more serious reasons than having some pleasant conversation between collegues <sarcastic icon>.

Thats donating towards a project, (which happens fairly often for us) - but not some binding contract.

I’d like to be see the reaction of the judge to such defence… won’t happen, 10K$ is too little for Epic to call their lawyers (but see next part).

I personally think dropping FBX development/support would trigger another Gooseberry game-dev debacle

It would be much worse than that; it would signal to every commercial outfit that BF is an unreliable business partner and this would mean no more corporate donations in the future, an outcome worse than a contract litigation.

Anyway, I don’t think that that comment is nothing more than a outburst of frustration (unless somebody want to kill Blender chances in the game development arena…).

The way I see this (Bastien I assume you will read this & feel free to correct me :slight_smile: ).

Bastien has taken on FBX and largely replaced me as maintainer, thats fine and I’m very grateful.

But he also has put a lot of time into supporting the entire spec (at least more then I was willing to support), which is admirable, but also a big task for a single developer.

Now he runs into all sorts of obscure problems with the format (animation between apps is especially hard). and is not so happy to be working on FBX.

Ton is not interested in formats really (he will support since its necessary, I mean he’s not personally interested in the details), so if a developer complains a format is horrible - Ton suggests to check on alternatives.
This doesn’t mean to drop FBX, just that if there are alternatives we could keep and eye on them and try add support.

To me this is a matter of managing a project, not biting off more then we can chew, and being careful with the level of complexity we accept example (https://developer.blender.org/D732).

So - its a complex topic, and I think you are taking some off hand remark and getting carried away unnecessarily.

Note that Bastien has added an experimental addon, so he can test features and get user feedback https://developer.blender.org/rBA0edbcbca6cd31bdb2b58c35d4abc1b5ee39ea9ab

For the record… that’s exactly the kind of rig that I create in Softimage, and exactly the kind of rig that MANY people are used to being able to being able to move between apps.

Why not to make it where Blender > FBX > Unity, Blender > FBX > UE4, Blender > FBX > CryEngine, Blender > FBX > another popular engine (not sure really which one is that) works flawlessly and not worry about Blender > FBX > Maya/MAX/etc. since that’s not what Epic donated money for, and it’s not what people what people wanted.

I recall people really wanted static meshes easily transferable with split normals preserved, between Blender and other 3D apps. There were a very few calls for animation support. Animation was mostly needed for game engines.

@motorsep - I was referring to importing animation (though export isn’t trivial either)

@m9105826 -

I was more or less told that it was unlikely that they’d ever work with Blender

Do you have a URL or a link to the bug report where you were told this?

Nope, it was in IRC some time ago.

For the record, here is the file.

The homebrew FBX import addon released by the Japanese dev a while back handled these rigs like a champ (aside from creating a 0-length bone at the end of every chain). It would be nice to see these tackled in Blender officially as that imported doesn’t even work anymore since switching to newer python.