FBX workflow improvements (from a game artist's perspective)
Hi! As a senior game developer jumping into Blender, there are some "small" but frequent and fairly critical features that would speed up my workflow and help avoid head aches.
I apologize for bringing up some that already (giakaama) has posted in this forum, but it the last post is a year old and I want to highlight this again, as it's important for a growing number of game artists joining the awesome Blender community :)
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Importing an .FBX by drag + dropping (saw another post here about that with loads of upvotes, just raising it once again)
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Being able to save a preset for the fbx export options. by default Blender's .fbx exporter outputs the entire scene, because "selected objects" checkbox is not ticked off by default. This causes me to lose 5-10 minutes if I accidentally export an entire scene including high-poly models when trying to bake something externally. (this could also be quick-fixed by just enabling "selected object" as default behavior. will at least be less destructive to workflows)
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Being able to import multiple .fbx files in a single go (right now Blender only takes 1 at a time, even if user can select multiple ones in the import UI).
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Being able to open up .FBX files straight from operating system. At least on Windows it's not possible. (This is a big deal, because the user cannot work in i.e Unreal Engine and use "Open Source" from the engine. Causing users to manually browsing each file)
For non-game developers these issues might seem trivial, but I know of big AAA-productions that use .fbx as the main workfiles, where opening/closing different .fbx files is done 50+ times a day during bug-fixing, including the project I'm working on now.
And thanks for making such amazing software :)
4 Comments
afaik:
developer.blender.org/D4071
preset system needs to be done from scratch (and developers are aware of that need)
been there, done that - fbx exporter is so slow that its faster to kill Blender and open it again :v
For now afaik only way of changing defaults in fbx exporter is by editing python exporter itself.
BTW take a look at some of alternative FBX exporter plugins
bitbucket.org/renderhjs/blender-addon-fbx-bundle
blenderartists.org/t/gyaz-export-tools-seamless-blender-to-unreal-4-fbx
* @Pawel Piotrowski * Thanks, this is very helpful! happy to see that it was possible to change the default as a temporary solution..! :)
I have looked at the alternatives, just want to highlight that this is something of a native part of Blender that would benefit new users coming from Unreal/Unity or any modern game engine.
Aside from that, there's a few things to keep your eyes on: a) The fast .obj import/export branch which will bring improvements to mesh loading for many formats, not just .obj - this should bring improvements in your export speed. b) Blender is working on improving GLTF support, and adding USD support, which serve as good alternatives to .fbx c) Epic Games just donated $1.2 million to Blender, so you'll see an improvement in Unreal Engine support for Blender in the future.
Not sure how any of this helps you now, but stay optimistic! And help out in the development if you can!
Some of these problems were redeemed with the "FBX bundle" Plugin from renderhjs: polycount.com/discussion/200292/blender-fbx-bundle-export-addon
Though, he hasn't updated it for 2.8 yet. It also had a lot of other nice FBX related options for game devs, so I am also eagerly awaiting the updates for the plugin.