Autodesk FBX exporter in Blender 2.45

Published by Bart on August 28th, 2007 in 3D News

Blender 2.45 will have an updated Autodesk FBX exporter to support exporting
character animations.

FBX is an advanced format, and some users might not be aware that the exporter already exported blenders multiple UV and color layers as well as lights, and camera data.

Reports are that this works with Maya, Motion-Builder, Cinema4D and Unity3d.

We hope that this will help Blenders presence in the game industry and as a tool for DCC (digital content creation).

To help out, you can download the script and test - It will run with Blender 2.45rc1 just replace your existing export_fbx.py file. Thanks also to Unity3D who are funding development of this exporter.

Article submitted by Campbell Barton

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17 Responses to “Autodesk FBX exporter in Blender 2.45”

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1 harkyman Aug 28th, 2007 at 7:45 pm

This is a great move, although I know that it wasn't fun for Campbell Barton to code this. FBX support is very important, as it was one of the more asked-about things at SIGGRAPH this year. "Those are cool tools, but can I export character animation through FBX?" Hearing "No" seemed to be a deal breaker, but now we can say Yes!

Thanks Campbell!
2 Dr. D Aug 28th, 2007 at 7:56 pm

Hey, is 2.45 supposed to support .dds textures? I had an svn build earlier that did, but the 2.45RC1 doesn't handle them. Anybody know if that feature got removed or pushed back or something? It didn't seem to me that it had any bugs.
Maybe it was just added too late to get into 2.45?
3 Jacob Picart Aug 28th, 2007 at 8:53 pm

What about FBX import into Blender? Is it supported or are there plans too? Thanks!
4 Gat Aug 28th, 2007 at 10:29 pm

this is great news! thanks to those who are making it happen! and to everyone else in the blender community!
5 BSM3D Aug 28th, 2007 at 11:33 pm

Super ! FBX support open a lot of realtime applications working with Blender ! 2.45 (and 2.50 will be great!)
6 mfoxdogg Aug 29th, 2007 at 2:32 am

Jacob Picart, Importing will require the use of the FBX SDK which is not covered by GPL so we have to tread very carfully

Dr. D, DDS support is still in the trunk of blender but it is a new feature and 2.45 is strictly bugfixes only, except for pyscripts ofcourse

Great work Cambel btw, they still don't work well in endorphine
7 Jacob Picart Aug 29th, 2007 at 4:14 am

mfoxdogg, thanks for the reply (makes sense).

Does anyone know of any other tools that will convert FBX to COLLADA or OBJ? Come to think of it, will an OBJ retain textures, animations keyframes, etc? Sorry, sort of a newbie question. Thanks in advanced!
8 Ideasman42 (Campbell Barton) Aug 29th, 2007 at 8:28 am

@mfoxdogg
Tried endorphin, importing some non blender created FBXs (people sent me for testing)
and couldn't get them to work either.

full post here
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=92082&page=8
9 Ideasman42 (Campbell Barton) Aug 29th, 2007 at 8:30 am

@Jacob - autodesk distribute a converter that converts to/from FBX/3ds/obj/collada… maybe some others.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=6839916
10 zeitmeister Aug 29th, 2007 at 9:59 am

Will there be an FBX-Importer?
It would make a lot of sense too, in my opinion…
11 adam Aug 29th, 2007 at 10:16 am

This is great - it is so nice to be able to use blender with Unity properly !
12 elite2864 Aug 29th, 2007 at 4:11 pm

@Ideasman42:
Since roundabout 3 years Blender-Users are searching for an FBX-Importer.
I think a filter with import/export-capabilities make sense.
Especially for FBX because most parameters - even deformation-data - could be handled.

With MAYA you can import any data included in an FBX-File (or other format) from any other application.
Finally there are workflows between different 3D-apps excluded Blender!

Don't make Blender to a isolated application!!

P.S.: the old exporter isn't working well. The actual obj-exporter not too!! It often triangulates files!
13 oin Aug 29th, 2007 at 6:10 pm

My vote here for an FBX importer, too. :)

Would rock for porting many full assets, or isolated game characters, etc, from Max/Maya to Blender :) :) I know of several game comunities that would make deep use of it.
14 George Aug 30th, 2007 at 6:38 am

is 2.45 out yet?
15 Ideasman42 (Campbell Barton) Aug 30th, 2007 at 2:34 pm

We can get around licenses (a number of ways) etc so its not impossible to write a (legal) FBX importer.

The problem is that its a lot of work, probably more work then writing the importer was and my guess is that it would take me 3-5 weeks full time to finish it.

So its not really about 'wanting' or 'votes', its just that some guy must devote a fair chunk of time to getting it done.

along with that, writing importers and exporters isnt all that fun. compared to say - writing modifiers in C or new tools.
So this might be a good candidate for 'Google Summer of Code', or a code bounty.

On the other hand, If anyones interested in writing this importer Ill gladly help them. that includes GSOC or if their getting a bounty.

How about somebody starts one here!
http://www.opensourcexperts.com/bountylist.html

PS.
@George - 2.45rc2 is being built as we speak, this has the latest fbx exporter included.
16 oin Aug 30th, 2007 at 9:31 pm

oops, sorry. That's one of the disadvantages of not being a programmer myself, sometimes don't realize the hard work behind things….Sorry :s