FBX Exporter For Ogre 2.1

The place for artists, modellers, level designers et al to discuss their approaches for creating content for OGRE.
ogre_2_1_user
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FBX Exporter For Ogre 2.1

Post by ogre_2_1_user »

Hello!
I am looking for a FBX Exporter which is compatible with the new Ogre 2.1 HLMS. Is it available or do we have to wait for Ogre 2.1 final release?

Thanks
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dark_sylinc
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Re: FBX Exporter For Ogre 2.1

Post by dark_sylinc »

It's hard to understand what you mean.

The FBX mainly deals with meshes. Older meshes can be read by Ogre 2.1 just fine. You can also use the OgreMeshTool to upgrade it to newer formats.

Materials can also be exported from FBX, but getting good materials out of FBX into any 3rd party rendering/game engine (Ogre, Unity, UE4, etc) never really works well; it's usually just quicker and results in higher quality to recreate the material by hand in whatever engine you're using.

IIRC the original FBX Exporter was written by community members, not by core Ogre devs. If no one picks it up, it won't be updated.
ogre_2_1_user
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Re: FBX Importer For Ogre 2.1

Post by ogre_2_1_user »

What I mean is does Ogre support or will it support importing FBX files directly? If not then what tools are people using to import the common mesh formats to Ogre
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dark_sylinc
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Re: FBX Importer For Ogre 2.1

Post by dark_sylinc »

ogre_2_1_user wrote:What I mean is does Ogre support or will it support importing FBX files directly?
No. The FBX SDK is closed source and proprietary. There are reverse engineered versions, but FBX is a complex format. We will not support it directly.
You can still use ASSIMP for the conversion, or other tools like fxOgreFBX or other FBX tools.
ogre_2_1_user wrote:If not then what tools are people using to import the common mesh formats to Ogre
You can use OgreMax plugins for Maya & 3DS Max, the blender exporter plugin + OgreXMLConverter for Blender. You can also use ASSIMP.

The same tools that worked on Ogre 1.x can still be used because Ogre 2.1 is backwards compatible with the older formats. In common cases there is a conversion step needed, which the samples cover how to do it, and the new "OgreMeshTool" (which is a repurposed MeshUpgrader merged with XMLconverter) can also do that job.

We're also looking into supporting OpenGEX directly which is a superior format and other engines are looking into adopting it too. The code hasn't been written yet merely due to lack of time.
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Re: FBX Exporter For Ogre 2.1

Post by ogre_2_1_user »

Thanks for the help. You are the best Matias
LePawel
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Re: FBX Exporter For Ogre 2.1

Post by LePawel »

Sorry for resurrecting a dead puppy, but I'm in the middle of upgrading my project to 2.1, and am wondering what the file format front is like now.
Is OpenGEX going to be a thing? Sounds like the bridge Ogre needs with the "commercial world". Porting from mainstream modelling packages can be a pain at the moment.
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TheOnlyJoey
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Re: FBX Exporter For Ogre 2.1

Post by TheOnlyJoey »

Probably not.

The Ogre mesh format is a sane and stable one, and the tools such as the blender exporter are quite stable.
Also Ogre is already used quite a bit in the 'commercial world', I don't think it needs to conform to a closed proprietary standard is quite bad for development.
I also think OpenGEK is abandoned and stalled development for quite a while.
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Re: FBX Exporter For Ogre 2.1

Post by LePawel »

Ok, thanks for info, I guess I'll have to learn some Blender basics in the future :)