Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
22
FBX Games Development Tools
Trevor Adams and Mark Davies
22.1 Introduction
FBX technology allows you to translate and exchange 3D assets and media from a
variety of sources quickly and easily. In the games community, FBX is used to move
artist content from digital content creation (DCC) tools to the game development
framework.
Autodesk FBX, as it is properly called, is developed by the Media & Entertain-
ment division of Autodesk, Inc. Accordingly, FBX is supported by most Autodesk
DCCproducts,aswellasbyanumberoftoolsbyothervendors.
Commercial game development frameworks that support FBX include the Epic
Unreal Engine and the Unity game development tool. As well, many game devel-
opment companies (game developers) have proprietary tool sets that use FBX.
This article will describe FBX technology, and will provide guidelines and tips
on how to use specific tools to get content from the DCC into your game.
22.2 Exporting and Importing Game Assets
Game assets are usually created by artists who use digital content creation packages
such as Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max, and Autodesk Softimage software, as
well as many more specialized products. Each DCC normally saves assets in its
own proprietary file format.
Certain game engines would have a hard time reading the native file formats
of all these applications. Instead, the game engines depend on interchange formats
such as FBX and COLLADA.
Most 3D applications can export (save) meshes, UVs, and animations to the
FBX file format without losing too much or any of the data in the process. Often the
export operation requires converting data from formats or data structures used by
the DCC to ones better suited for gaming. For example, textures can be converted
to TIFF, and patches can be converted to meshes.
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