/3/ - 3DCG

>>617795
They rely on their proprietary shit format FBX, no way in hell will they support open stuff until enough of their slave-clients demand it. Still, there should be plugins available even for Autoshill apps.

>>617795
Sadly while open source or some more commercial tools and engines start to use gltf as the future for sharing things faster and better (i hope to make it work on java opengl meme) memedesk is a big ass that keeps on shitting against any hopes of decreasing the microsoft bloat effect they are inputing upon themselves.

In the '90s Microsoft was known for a marketing tactic called EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) which is exactly what Khronos Group did over the years OpenGL.
They're going to do the same with this glTF thing. They'll suck you in and then they'll slowly make it so complex, broken and unuseable you'll be forced to use proprietary formats to get anything done. It's just another trap.

>>617796
>>617804
Said the blenderina.

glTF is doomed to fail if the big players decide so. Let's wait and see...

>>617847
Said the autism fairy. What do you bring to the discussion today?

>gltf
>gf

>>617848
Sure, but it seems the big players are already pushing it forward. For example, Facebook has recently published an FBX -> glTF converter, and they also started supporting glTF files in users' uploads. This can be quite impactful -- suddenly the best way to share your artwork in a generalist site like Facebook is by using glTF.

>>617881
It's called pump and dump.

>>617795
Just use FBX with Autodesk applications
Even if they start supporting glTF it will just be half-assed and buggy on purpose like all their other import/export plugins that aren't FBX

Also: while glTF is better than FBX, it still is a flawed format with arbitrary and unnecessary limitations
No one wants to switch from one flawed format to another flawed format

>>617889
>while glTF is better than FBX, it still is a flawed format with arbitrary and unnecessary limitations
Can you elaborate, please?

>>617942
the number of bones per vertex is limited to 4 and it still uses plain text rather than being 100% binary

>>617949
Right. Because binary is better.

>>617958
is that supposed to be ironic?
binary literary is better in every way

>>617959
Elaborate

>>617796
>>617804
>>617845
>>617848

Blendlets blaming Autodesk for terrible FBX support in Blender when the real problem is GPL autism by the developers. The FBX library is free to include in any software, but Blender devs whinging about licensing license means that every software in existence can read and write FBX properly except for Blender.


https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Ton/Autodesk_FBX_EULA

>>617795
>creation tools
>minecraft

>marmoset and sketchfab in two different categories

>facebook
>office

fucking hilarious
0/10

>>618009
I agree with the first two things being idiotic, but facebook and office as target platforms for standardized 3d assets actually makes a lot of sense

>>618001
binary is faster AND easier to parse
the only "downside" is that it isn't human readable when you open it in a text editor

>>618006
Are you retarded?
FBX is a closed format. Only software Autodesk approves will get the necessary documentation to implement it.

>>618006

FBX support is also terrible in C4D, worse than blender (can't even export smoothing groups to unreal).

>>618021

"The Autodesk® FBX® SDK is a free, easy-to-use, C++ software development platform and API toolkit that allows application and content vendors to transfer existing content into the FBX format with minimal effort."

http://help.autodesk.com/view/FBX/2019/ENU/?guid=FBX_Developer_Help_welcome_to_the_fbx_sdk_platform_requirements_html

All you have to do to implement FBX support is download this free SDK, hook up the .dll to your program, and then your software can import and export FBX files. You don't need Autodesk's "approval," all you have to do is accept the license. But Blender devs refuse to do that, because of their autistic "but muh libre" bullshit, as you can see in the wiki post.

Autodesk doesn't have to provide documentation in order for Blender to implement FBX. I think it would be slightly nicer if they provided documentation instead, but that SDK has so far been an acceptable solution for the entire 3d industry, except for Blender. What you said is simply wrong.

>>618045
Oh and to clear up any ambiguity from that quote at the start. The FBX plugin allows import and export. Just look at the SDK documentation to see what Blender could do if they just softened their rigid ideology.

>>618006
Autism wins at the end of the day though whenever it comes to this sort of stuff. It's only a matter of time that FBX gets replaced by a format that was collectively built by an open source consortium. I do not need to understand the file format itself to come to this conclusion either, as you would only need to look at past history of other propriatary file formats to understand where the market leads. Just check out how HTML5 has decimated the market for Flash. Sure FBX is a free, easy-to-use, C++ software dev platform, but who's to say that FBX on Blender would be the same quality as FBX on Autodesk? It wouldn't make sense for a company not to create a file format that is setup to execute best on their programs, and it defeats the entire purpose of creating and promoting the file format in the first place.

i don't think you guys understand how much data fbx supports. it can literally save scene subsets if not an entire scene,e in of itself, and be cross platform, while preserving morph sliders for various blendshapes if they exist, AND preserve animation data too, AND material nodes. glTF is not even remotely comparable to it.

>>617949
Don't know about the bones limitation, but glTF 2.0 defines a binary format.

>>618045
>All you have to do to implement FBX support is download this free SDK, hook up the .dll to your program, and then your software can import and export FBX files.
The GPL forbids this.

You can instead create a proxy plugin that exchanges data through a local network with a server that is directly using the FBX SDK. This is what many render plugins do, for example.

The GPL allows this, but the Blender Institute hasn't shown any interest in doing it. There's a plugin out there by some third party, but it doesn't seem maintained.

>>618055
glTF 2.0 can do all of that, as far as I know.

>>618073
"The number of joints that influence one vertex is limited to 4."

https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/tree/master/specification/2.0#skins

>>618074
>doesn't seem maintained
Just like Blender itself.

>>618074
Yep, definitely, fuck the GPL, it is the poison in the heart of Blender. Why do you think the only commercial plugin for Blender is the Vray exporter which is a scene dumper just as you described? No serious developers would spend their time developing cutting edge physics simulation software and then GPL it. Bless the hearts of the Blender Foundation and everyone willing to try their hardest to make free versions of real pro stuff, but every time I see the Youtube commenters shitting "Can you plz make this a blender plugin" on some state of the art SIGGRAPH presentation that some PhD computer scientists probably spent 2 years their life on I want to tear my fucking hair out.

>>618086
And this goes DOUBLE for decades of people chanting "Soon the studios will start using Blender!" when any TD or plugin developer for a serious pipeline will actually laugh their ass off at the notion they should have to GPL their hard work if they ever want to redistribute it.

>>618086
>Why do you think the only commercial plugin for Blender is the Vray exporter
The fuck? I actually have Octane working with Blender right now.

That you don't know of production tools used in conjunction with Blender doesn't mean they don't exist, eh.

>>618086

There are quite a lot of blender plugins hidden behind a paywall.

>>618073
glTF does support binary but it also supports plain text, so you basically have to implement 2 formats

>>618114
And every last one of them is GPL. I can send you my copy of Auto-Rig Pro right now, and same goes for any plugin you've bought, they're all out in the open as soon as anyone makes that first purchase.

>>618107
Alright, so there are a few commercial render engines that work with Blender. The point is not that commercial plugins are impossible, the point is that renderers have a very special technique of dumping a scenegraph to an external file, which is then loaded for rendering by a separate binary. That's a very specific workflow, and it just so happens render engines already work that way. But the vast majority of commercial plugins work as dynamic libraries, and would have to be completely rearchitectured to work with Blender. And if exporting and loading data into an external file is too much overhead (say for instance a plugin for a new realtime mesh deformer) then it's just not possible to release this plugin without GPL'ing. Blender's copyleft licensing is a very serious and critical issue hindering commercial development, not something to roll your eyes at because render engines happen to function by performing a clever GPL workaround.

>>618115
Uh, no. The text part is JSON. Practically every language out there has at least one library mature enough to deal with JSON files easily. For a programmer worth their salt, this is cake.

From what I saw, the JSON part is just a description of the contents of whatever assets/scene you are storing, and where to find their binary representation, either in the same or separate glTF file. The binary representation, furthermore, can be done exactly the same way assets are stored in GPUs if one so wishes, which makes the format streamable directly to VRAM.

In other words, not only glTF can be read by a human to know what a given file contains (not that you would do this frequently, anyway), but its contents can also be loaded faster than other formats' into GPUs.

>>618118
>And every last one of them is GPL. I can send you my copy of Auto-Rig Pro right now, and same goes for any plugin you've bought, they're all out in the open as soon as anyone makes that first purchase.
You can do that with the version you got. If the developer takes care to safeguard the new version, they can continue to earn money.

So you can deal in the program however you want, and the developer is additionally motivated to improve the program. Win-win.

>And if exporting and loading data into an external file is too much overhead (say for instance a plugin for a new realtime mesh deformer) then it's just not possible to release this plugin without GPL'ing.
Good point. I think a way of going around this would be to keep the asset (in this case a deforming mesh, excellent example) in memory accessible by both Blender and the external plugin. Not sure if any of the mainstream OS would allow this, but in any case it certainly makes developing such a plugin much more complicated. Not impossible, but probably economically infeasible unless Blender adoption skyrockets at the industry level.

>>618006
First off i'm not a blendlet, i am aware of massive issues on Blender's part (they literally just removed the game engine yesterday because it was too shitty to even figure out wtf)
and second FBX is not free for all. Maybe do more research before coming to such conclusion.

>>618158
>>618153
And i fucking agree with GPL fucking up Blender. Open Source can only be so great until you start thinking about trying to make it commercialy-viable.

>>618153
Alright well good luck getting Golaem to GPL their $9,000 crowd simulation plugin to run in Blender, since with a few years of work they could theoretically make it so much better that people would pay $9,000 instead of using the April 2018 version, hell, they might be able to sell a copy every two years that way! Win win right?

I'm making fun of course but come on man, don't give me that bullshit argument, you know these plugin devs (and core devs) are basically doing it as public service, making ten or twenty grand on the side over the course of several years is barely worth mentioning if you're a software dev at that level, and that is a cold hard truth about Blender's development model

>>618158
FBX is not free software, but it is free to use, and it would simply Blender hold their nose for a bit and say "yes we'll accept your the license agreement," maybe they have a second download on their site like "Blender plus FBX support," but no, that nut case Ton Rosendaal who has literally no legal training has decided that the Autodesk license agreement is incompatible with Blender and won't let it get included. How about you not just do research, but literally read the thread, since there was a link to the Blender wiki posted above detailing this insane ideological decision process.