I doubt its for the Unreal base game because there are top notch artists contributing already and they have the licences. It could be true for the Marketplace though which will be built on top of the new Unreal game. They need a lot of people contributing to it and making Blenders I/O seamless seams like the way to go.
Yar, for 10,000 some one should be able to do this in a week.
hire some C++ superNinja
You could write any exporter (or importer) in a week but its quality and robustness comes by the input of a multitude of usage scenarios and user input over a much longer period of time. Especially on full scene conversions. Having a long breath is essential
As for the alternative route… Yes possible, but you would also run in the same problems converting complex scenes. (In fact you have to fight the quirks of both programs)
I think one important step to get this going would be to actually rise the awareness this module does actually exist.
Mhmmm after thinking this…I might donate the converter I hacked together for LW (reading only… I could’t get the saver to work) with this library as a reference implementation if this might help…just need a place to properly host it.
This is really great news! I’m sure this will help even non game developers…
But what makes me somewhat skeptical of this working on the long run is this…
Autodesk controls the .fbx format, does it cross your mind that they might try to do whatever it takes to ensure that Blender will never be able to cut into their marketshare when it comes to the creation of game assets? Say that Blender makes leaps and bounds among game creators, who is to say that Autodesk won’t lock everything down and cripple Blender’s newly found export ability then (and I can actually see them doing that because they’re generally not very receptive to Blender)? The devs. have already had a hard enough time getting it to the current stage and that could be taken as a warning sign that Autodesk does not want Blender to even be relevant in that market.
How do you lock a file type? Most applications have import/export for common file types. It’s not a problem.
Honestly, Autodesk doing that would hurt themselves in the process. By locking down the .FBX File type they have basically signed their own death warrant.
People will remove the .FBX file type or just let it become deprecated in their own engines and tools.
This will happen if they do it either legally or through code.
EDIT: Back on topic - I am very happy that blender is getting EPIC games like navigation 
One of the major things from me adopting Blender 100% is the navigation and clustered UI.
Well let’s just say that make frequent changes, share the doc with commercial companies but not with blender. At that time devs here will find it hard or impossible to update in time making blender irrelevant. I would prefer just the ability to load blend files. It could act as our own exchange format(ok it is our own format but you get me…I hope)
I think you can load DAE and OBJ. files into unreal if not now then soon
It is, but if developers (and users…) agree with some new feature then it’s ok-ish… I hope someone would sponsor snap-to-grid. Maybe we need to contact some game company that has money to throw away for that purpose.
Whats wrong with the current implementation of Snap To Grid?
Maybe we need to contact some game company that has money to throw away for that purpose.
I was about to write an essay about this comment and deleted it. throwing away money is definitely not what these companies are doing.
It doesn’t exist. Blender only has Snap To Grid Increments.
You can only snap in three dimensions instead of two like you need in most use cases. Note we’re talking about snapping to the actual grid, and not to increments - increments are working fine.
@PLyczkowski: Actually, there’s a Selection to Grid under Shift-S, but like I said, it’s nearly useless.
This is great news, not only for the funds themselves but as a confirmation Blender is being taken seriously by major players in game development.
Really good news!
Do we have some idea of which areas of the FBX importer/exported they want to improve?
I hope Bastien gets to work on it. He has done a truly fantastic work on the latest FBX exporter in 2.71. If you guys haven’t tried it yet, I recommend you have a go. Many improvements and new features (soft/hard edges, custom properties, textures from materials…).
By making trivial changes to the format that break compatibility and communicating these changes only to partners. It has happened in the past. Ofcourse, this also means that Autodesk would break compatibility with old versions of their own software, but since they are in the business of selling software, they might think this is not a problem. I hope they realize that this will alienate their partners in the long run, but we don’t know how rational they are.
Its not as simple as that, FBX SDK is used by many smaller players (indi game engines for eg), so the whole “communicating these changes only to partners” isn’t viable.
The way this works - Autodesk assumes everyone uses their SDK, so they can (and do) change the format how they like and as long as the SDK continues working - everyone (except for Blender) is OK.
So - yes they can mess with us, but its also not in their best interest for their developers, If we change the blend file format about, its a pain to maintain all versions in code - so expect its something similar for them.
Nevertheless, its possible Autodesk does this in some limited way to intentionally break compatibility. In that case - we still have working 7.4x FBX support, that wont go away, but it means upgrading becomes a challenge.
If it were very obvious Autodesk did this - it wouldn’t be great PR, and could cause some small backlash, (abusing monopoly), but it wouldn’t surprise me either.
Note that I already ran into some (weak) attempt (as far as I can tell), to make it so nobody except Autodesk can write valid files, for this reason every FBX exported from Blender is from ‘1970-01-01 10:00:00:000’, since they use some hash on the date at the end of the file, nobody figured out yet.
Epic = good 'ole North Carolina Southern boys. They are good people. This is great news!
That said, it hasn’t hurt Microsoft with their umpteen different versions of the DOC format. And really, Autodesk has already done this before to some extent with DXF.
Yikes, its sad to see the heavy hand of censorship is still going on. Its sad to see Ton’s use of the word “poisonous” continue to apply to people who share their concerns or share inconvenient lines of thought.
That said, do we know if this list is still being followed?
If so, which of the “low hanging fruit” can be addressed with such funds? Like other have pointed out, PBR is HUGE, and its playing a big part in the next generation of real time asset rendering. Even Krita, which is a 2d painting application has been keeping up with the demand.