BrokeAss Games Releases FBX to Torque Community!

Wow, two blogs in two days is, I believe, an official record for me... but remember how I said there would be more exciting news in the near future?

Well, after having this thread brought to my attention a couple of days ago, I just couldn't hold out any longer. BrokeAss Games has officially decided to release our FBX importer/exporter to the Torque Community, as a thank you for all the great things you all have done for us and for Torque over the years!

You can grab it right now and start playing with it (AFTER you read the compiling instructions below!) from here:

github.com/ChrisCalef/Torque3D - branch fbx

Unfortunately, I must admit that this announcement full of good news comes with a bit of bad news as well... while I knew it needed a lot of work, I was not aware until today of the extent to which my FBX work interferes with the pre-existing Collada importer in T3D. It is still possible to import simple collada models, but the soldier_rigged.dae player blows up all over the place. Turns out I never went back and tested that... sigh.

That being the case, I didn't bother making a pull request to GG or anything, since it obviously isn't ready to be added to the trunk yet. However, the code is available for scrutiny, and if you get it running, even without collada functioning you can make this into a build that lets you import fbx models and then copy the working dts models over to your regular project. (I know, this is lame, but it is merely where we are today, not where we expect to end up!)

By releasing this into the community, I am fervently hoping, of course, that somebody else with some programming chops might take an interest and start fixing and expanding this work. I am fully expecting to roll up my sleeves and get back in there myself as soon as possible, but after spending the last month and a half on various non-paying Torque-related projects, at this point I am going to have to step back for a bit and pursue some of my neglected contracting customers.

Shameless self promotion: if anyone with deep pockets (or even shallow pockets) in the community wanted to actually pay me to put some serious time into this, now that it's property of everyone, I could definitely bump it up on my priority list.

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Now, to get it running, you have to download the FBX SDK from here, first:

usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775847

Then you need to make a directory in your Engine/libs folder, called fbxsdk, or something similar, and make sure it has the includes and libs from the fbx sdk in it. Then point your DLL project at those include/lib directories, and include the appropriate fbx lib as in input.

I've set up the Templates/Full solution under vs2008, if this helps.

Finally, you also have to copy the fbxsdk_20113_1.dll to your game directory.

Because of the collada problems, I added the old ForgeSoldier player model (I hope that's okay with GG legal?) and switched the player over to there, just to get up to game state.

I also removed the mountImage for the player's weapon, because the collada-based gun was also breaking the build.

I think that's all there was to do... but I could well be wrong. If anybody tries it and needs help, let me know. One word of warning, I compiled this on last year's version of FBX SDk, if the new one has broken anything you could get compile errors related to that.

Otherwise, good luck, and have fun!