FBX support coming to Godot in 3.2?

emo10001

So according to the change log, 3.2 is integrating Assimp which will allow for support with more file formats. FBX is specifically mentioned.

https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

This would be great but I thought Godot was staying away from FBX due to it's proprietary nature. Is this no longer true? Does anyone know have any insight if there has been any changes to FBX or if something has changed to where this is no longer an issue?

@Calinou any insight?

TwistedTwigleg

I believe, and I could be totally wrong about this, the plan was not to support FBX because it required using the proprietary, closed source plugin. However, some members of the Assimp community decided to write their own (reverse engineered?) importer for FBX and integrated it into Assimp. Because FBX is/was heavily requested, the decision to integrate Assimp was made because it allowed for importing FBX files without having to use proprietary code.

That said, I'm not totally sure if that is what happened. I do know there was a movement to give Assimp FBX importing capabilities without having to use the Autodesk API, and I believe this was a big part of why Godot now supports Assimp.

emo10001

@TwistedTwigleg said: I believe, and I could be totally wrong about this, the plan was not to support FBX because it required using the proprietary, closed source plugin. However, some members of the Assimp community decided to write their own (reverse engineered?) importer for FBX and integrated it into Assimp. Because FBX is/was heavily requested, the decision to integrate Assimp was made because it allowed for importing FBX files without having to use proprietary code.

That said, I'm not totally sure if that is what happened. I do know there was a movement to give Assimp FBX importing capabilities without having to use the Autodesk API, and I believe this was a big part of why Godot now supports Assimp.

Ahh good info @TwistedTwigleg . Thank you.

emo10001

@jbrooks79 said: My biggest wish, is that if I import a 3D model, from Blender, that the materials show up, right away, there's a bug in glTF

That's strange. I haven't had any issues with exporting from Blender in gltf. And my models imports with textures in place.

Are you saying your models imports bare with no textures?

novaleaf

Disclaimer: I am a total modeling novice. So take my anecdote with some skepticism.

@emo10001 I am doing the I fish instancing demo: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.1/tutorials/3d/vertex_animation/animating_thousands_of_fish.html#doc-animating-thousands-of-fish

and tried exporting the fish model from Blender. I tried glTF a bunch of different ways but it never exported successfully. When I tried obj it worked fine.

emo10001

@novaleaf @jbrooks79

Just curious. Are these models that have been colored in blender, or with using a texture image? All of mine have been texture images. I wonder if that's the difference. I'll try one tonight that is painted and see if I have the same issues.

novaleaf

@emo10001 Maybe. the fish model has a texture, but in the blender file it doesn't seem to be used by default. I don't know enough to try getting it rendered in blender. i outputted to .obj and setup the texture in godot.

emo10001

just fyi @jbrooks79 and @novaleaf

https://godotengine.org/article/here-comes-godot-3-2#3d-assets

cybereality

glTF has worked for me. Using the embedded option from Blender seems to work best. I can definitely export one texture and another UV map for lighting. I haven't tested animating yet.

One thing that has been bothering me is reimporting models. They don't seem to update in the editor but I hear this might be fixed in 3.2.