Slightly off-topic but I’d much prefer to see an Alembic importer.
In my personal, and frank opinion, if you’re exporting unfinished animation between applications then that’s rather inefficient and is asking for trouble.
How about starting another thread with the appropriate topic then?
Back to FBX import.
I’m going to look into creating a free open source FBX importer that supports bones, skeleton and skinning info, without using the Autodesk FBX SDK. Once I have some results, I’ll report it here.
I will need to have a few simple animated files, created with Maya, 3ds Max and other packages, together with their FBX export for testing. The first test files should be very simple, like this Blend file.
Can anyone help providing such simple skeletal/skinned animated 3ds Max (3ds) Maya (.mb) together with the exported .fbx file?
Cool stuff erwin…
During week days i can supply those with maya 2012, from home only with very old maya.
Slightly off-topic but I’d much prefer to see an Alembic importer.
In my personal, and frank opinion, if you’re exporting unfinished animation between applications then that’s rather inefficient and is asking for trouble.
Alembic would be cool too for sure… however, working in a collaborative environment most of the time I fundamentally disagree with your viewpoint.
In this last week different parts of my current project have been worked on in max, maya and cinema4d where transfer of models, uvs, weights and animation where needed for all.
I’d have liked to have used blender too but lack of usable fbx or collada support meant it remained an island and couldn’t join the party.
Thanks.
What file formats were used between packages?
All are now autodesk owned and fbx works seamlessly.
BTW are you thinking about using the sdk or reverse engineering ascii fbx?
Do you need ascii or binary fbx/maya files
Maya .mb files together with the ascii FBX files is best. I will write my own FBX ascii importer and extract skeleton, bone, skinning and mesh data, no need for the Autodesk FBX sdk. IrrExthas some example code to extract FBX binary data, so once we can deal with ascii, binary will likely be easy.
Initially I will use the AnimKit to verify the results. Later someone can hook this up to Blender.
I’ll sure be checking this, really interesting.
I’d have liked to have used blender too but lack of usable fbx or collada support meant it remained an island and couldn’t join the party.
Yep, is a pitty. FBX full import would certainly rock. I used it in the past at certain Max based job, to import several characters from other team member. It worked quite well. In some cases, it even served to fix some wrecked native files… (long story)
Ummmm… unless I missed a major announcement, Cinema 4D is not (yet) owned by Autodesk…
Sounds very promising Erwin! Let me know if you want any fbx sample exports from Cinema4D.
This is awesome news. I have been a long time Blender user and FBX import will make me so incredibly happy - you have no idea!
Hi,
Sounds amazing.
I really NEED that .fbx import too. I use Blender as a professionnal and I daily export stuff for Unity/UDK using FBX.
At the moment, Blender in the video game industry can’t be used in a professionnal environment along with 3dsmax and/or maya simply because we don’t have any possibility to import stuff into Blender which is a pitty :(. FBX is a great format for that and I totally support this project !
Keep it up.
Any development on this?
I agree this would be a huge gamechanger for studios to integrate blender into their pipeline
If you need beta testers, I would be more than happy to help
e1
wow I just saw this topic… The news I red some post ago is great and erwin, you have all my support! I have student versions of max and maya and even if I cannot use them really well I can try to provide you the fbx files you need!
I would be will to pay for possibility of importing fbx in blender! This WE ill try to provide you some file.
Blender should aim to have all exporters possible.
My fingers are crossed that this proposal gets selected for GSOC. Of course, Collada import got it last year… and that didn’t turn out so well… 
I remain hopeful. 
I don’t see it in this thread, but the author of assimp (http://assimp.sourceforge.net/) has proposed making an FBX importer for Gsoc. Hope he gets in.
If you are that desperate download maya on an education license and load the fbx file in then just export and .obj or other blender supported format.:yes:
If you are that desperate download maya on an education license and load the fbx file in then just export and .obj or other blender supported format.:yes:
-they are talking about exporting animation (bones, keyframes, etc.) which obj does not do. FBX is the logical choice (because it’s the standard).
Has there been any more progress on an FBX importer?
I tried to read vertices of a box form binary fbx file and the best thing I got is this:
object is a plain 3d studio box
array([[[ 0.00000000e+00, -3.14453125e+00, 9.52882956e-44],
[ 5.24288000e+05, 2.46628530e-41, -7.09754880e+07],
[ 6.26722891e-39, 0.00000000e+00, 7.69144531e+02],
[ 0.00000000e+00, -3.14062500e+00, 9.52882956e-44]],
[[ 8.49579432e+36, 2.44806842e-41, 2.00000000e+00],
[ 6.31379266e-39, 0.00000000e+00, 7.69140625e+02],
[ 3.68934881e+19, 2.46873960e-01, 9.52882956e-44],
[ 7.86432000e+05, 2.44834868e-41, 0.00000000e+00]],
[[ 6.26787491e-39, -1.68518870e-34, 7.61949951e+02],
[ 0.00000000e+00, -3.14453125e+00, 9.52882956e-44],
[ 5.24288000e+05, 2.46628530e-41, -0.00000000e+00],
[ 6.26789733e-39, 0.00000000e+00, 7.69144531e+02]],
[[ 0.00000000e+00, -3.14062500e+00, 9.52882956e-44],
[ 4.50359963e+15, 2.44834868e-41, 2.00000000e+00],
[ 6.31379266e-39, 0.00000000e+00, 7.69140625e+02],
[ 0.00000000e+00, 3.39843750e+00, 9.52882956e-44]]])
could please somoene draw those faces and post what comes out ??
P.S. I never used blender.
Although I am slowly learning Blender for my own purposes I reached this thread while investigating some third party software (Image Armada) for virtual art galleries and discovered it utilised fbx files.
Is there a viable GPL friendly alternative to fbx that might be suitable for such software developers to utilise and which can be generated from Blender. It seems to me that while Autodesk ties up its sdk there is an opportunity to broaden Blender’s reach into the application marketplace.
I hasten to add that I am a real noob but perhaps looking at the problem from a different direction might generate something surprising.