This sounds very unfortunate but what I was expecting, I dont see why we need yet another proprietary format for people to fight over and it just makes things more difficult for those of us who have to write support for X DCC tool.
Open formats that are extensible similar to Pixars USD allow data to be used or dropped as required rather than requiring a strict data structure so that every piece of data conforms and thats why I do like the look of glTF is it does have room for additional data at very low development cost. It means there can be a standard for the core of a format and for those that need more they can still use said convention without having to reinvent the wheel every time.
It seems odd to me Epic chose to go this route since there are quite a few intermediate tools that specialize in format conversions, they even work on commandline for heavily automated pipelines.
Thanks for the information, I feel even better about pursuing this path as I was worried I was doing rework that would end up obsolete fast, it means I keep my competitive advantage in regards to my pipeline
As Epic explained in introduction to Data Smith, they hired some “third company” to use (probably existing) exporters from CAD software, and just created importer for it. However I wasn’t able to find any information about “Data Smith” in internet, so may be I’m wrong. Their solution is completely closed source, works only with CAD, and intended for Unreal Engine Enterprise.
Until there are no good glTF C++ code for UE4 then Blender as example would need to support .FBX well in 2.8 and forward. Autodesk should release .FBX format to public.
In the end i really hope Epic will one day move away from .FBX and FBX will stay optional not hard requirement. In meantime .FBX has to be reverse engineered even better, now it is quite ok “so-so” in Blender but some improvements and fixes could be made from reverse engineering.
I think it will be years until whole 3D community will accept best format, is it glTF? i hope so.
Plugins for Max/Maya and Blender already exist and all we need is for UE4 to be able to import the format. It’s open standard and there should be no issues implementing it unlike black-box FBX.
From the comparison chart of OpenGEX it’s pretty clear that gltf is not a great format. On top of that it’s not even widely supported despite being around for some time already.
The page also makes a clear distinction between a pipeline format and a run time format.
If you go to the gltf page there are many things supporting it. I just don’t understand why unreal is only supporting two formats. With the open source initiative you’d expect a lot more.
Unity has been supporting blend files for years. And considering the rise in popularity it’s just off that unreal doesn’t support it official.
What does Epic have to lose if they add more formats?
You need to log into Github and connect your account with Epic’s one. This way you can access Unreal’s repository.
This is offical plugin, I didn’t write it
