MDB to FBX, FBX to MDB converter

[TrinitalMod]

out of curiosity: why did you go for fbx in conjunction with blender? is it a data format you know in detail? are there any features only fbx supports? specifically i am asking because collada seems the "wiser" choice, being an open format and being supported by almost every dcc tool around. to my knowledge to get full feature support fbx has to be licensed from autodesk, and was only reverse engineered to get an addon running in blender.

 

AFAIK FBX is considered the pseudo standard over OBJ.

It also has the benefit of holding Animations / Meshes / Textures ect all in one file.

 

It has native support in the latest version of Blender and is used in 3DS Max / Maya.

So I think it's a fine choice. You can always convert from FBX to something else by adding another command to the script he packaged with it.

 

You could call on a converter from FBX > Whatever on the last line and go GR2 > FBX > X // X > FBX > GR2.

[FreshLook]

out of curiosity: why did you go for fbx in conjunction with blender? is it a data format you know in detail? are there any features only fbx supports? specifically i am asking because collada seems the "wiser" choice, being an open format and being supported by almost every dcc tool around. to my knowledge to get full feature support fbx has to be licensed from autodesk, and was only reverse engineered to get an addon running in blender.

 

The tool isn't tied to Blender at all, it's only tied to FBX. You can use any application that supports FBX. When I test a FBX or show something, I only use Blender because I don't have other applications. Maybe this has given the impression that my tool is tied to Blender. The goal of my tool is to interoperate with as many applications as possible (3ds Max, Maya, ...). I chose FBX because, according to my research, it was the most robust format in terms of support across several applications.

 

Since the FBX format hasn't been completely reverse engineered, the only way to fully process FBX is by using the FBX SDK from Autodesk, which is free, but it's incompatible with the GPL license, which is why Blender doesn't use it. My tool isn't GPL, so I don't have issue using it.

Edited October 21, 2017 by FreshLook

[Semp3r]

It also has the benefit of holding Animations / Meshes / Textures ect all in one file. It has native support in the latest version of Blender and is used in 3DS Max / Maya.

so does collada. it's an open format which is supported by every dcc tool, specifically created for editable assets being passed between different applications. it's free and not tied to a money greedy corp only interested in dominating the market with their products.

 

 

 

The tool isn't tied to Blender at all, it's only tied to FBX. [...] I chose FBX because, according to my research, it was the most robust format in terms of support across several applications.

i am aware of that. it's just that the future of blender's fbx support ain't that bright. it solely depends on one single developer. if one day he's gone, the integration of newer versions of fbx will be vacant. that has nothing to do with your tool, and i really don't want to pick a quarrel here, i was just interested in the decision to opt for fbx. thanks for answering.

[jutaro]

Well I cant answer for him, but for me I had problems with DAE some times and with the FBX I had minor headaches.

 

Both of then had pros and cons.

 

There is no SDK for reading/writing DAE files. That's why there are so many buggy interpretations of it, but its very easy to read/writebecause its open-source

FBX has a SDK, so everybody reads and writes FBX files(not so easy like DAE) the same way. But, it's not open-source like DAE, but works fairly well

This is my opinion.

[TrinitalMod]

 

i am aware of that. it's just that the future of blender's fbx support ain't that bright. it solely depends on one single developer. if one day he's gone, the integration of newer versions of fbx will be vacant. that has nothing to do with your tool, and i really don't want to pick a quarrel here, i was just interested in the decision to opt for fbx. thanks for answering.

 

I doubt he's the only one capable of doing a FBX converter. In fact there were 2 FBX Plugins floating around for blender for quite a while.

Now it's just a standard Plugin / File Format that ships with Blender 2.79+ ..

You don't even need to hunt down a plugin anymore it comes native.

 

Obviously Open Source is always a preference but FBX is very widely used and again, nothing stops you from doing a second conversion on the command line.

[rjshae]

I've had issues importing Collada files into Blender, especially with recent releases. Their importer needs an update.

[rjshae]

I attempted to use the nw2fbx.exe utility from release 0.2. The drag-and-drop gave me the following error:

 

'nw2fbx' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

I tried it in a command shell, but it said it couldn't find the NWN2 installation directory. I have the following in config.yml:

# (Optional) Directory where NWN2 is installed.

# nwn2_home: C:\GOG Games\NWN2 Complete

nwn2_home: C:\GOG Games\NWN2 Complete

[FreshLook]

 

I attempted to use the nw2fbx.exe utility from release 0.2. The drag-and-drop gave me the following error:

 

'nw2fbx' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

I tried it in a command shell, but it said it couldn't find the NWN2 installation directory. I have the following in config.yml:

# (Optional) Directory where NWN2 is installed.

# nwn2_home: C:\GOG Games\NWN2 Complete

nwn2_home: C:\GOG Games\NWN2 Complete

 

 

Are you dragging from a directory different than where nw2fbx is located? Currently, the drag&drop only works if the dragged file is in the same directory that nw2fbx. In the next version it'll work from any directory.

 

When executing from the command shell, where are you located? Where is config.yml located?

[rjshae]

Are you dragging from a directory different than where nw2fbx is located? Currently, the drag&drop only works if the dragged file is in the same directory that nw2fbx. In the next version it'll work from any directory.

Yes that worked. Thank you.

[rjshae]

I tried converting PLC_NT_Myrkul_roid04 and PLC_NT_Myrkul_roid04_idle.GR2 into an FBX file using the drag-and-drop method, but the imported FBX model didn't have an armature. I think you mentioned earlier that the tool would add at least one bone, so I'm probably not understanding something.