4mo ago

Godot Proposal: Collaborate with other projects to create a new 3D interchange format

Collaborate with other projects to create a new 3D interchange format · godotengine godot-proposals · Discussion #11283

It is hard to get models out of Blender into Godot (correctly and without loosing half the work).

Gamedev relevant open-source projects should come together to create a new 3D interchange format. More in the GitHub discussion.

I've submitted this proposal to other open source projects as well:

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18 comments

There have been so many attempts of that over the years...
- Once upon a time there was Collada. But now it seems like USD is the open format gaining traction.
  Blender already has support, they just need to add USD support to Godot now. And someone's already made a plugin so you can already import them today (in theory, I haven't used it yet)
  
  From the proposal:
  USD is not 'just a 3d format'. Its scope is far bigger and more comparable to an entire game-engine project rather than a single asset. It can make use of FBX files, and it could make use of this proposed format in the same way. USD does not replace FBX, or any other file format like that, and it's very complex.
  I don't want to bash on USD, but its use is mostly in the VFX world, which vastly differs from game-dev.
  Also, last month, I tried to get a model from Blender 4.2 to Unity 2022 in USD. It omitted the main armature. I quadruple checked all settings^^
  That Godot plugin you linked uses Blender to import USD files to convert them to glTF 2.0, which then will actually get imported in Godot.
  Collada has been deprecated in Blender.
  
  Its scope is far bigger and more comparable to an entire game-engine project rather than a single asset.
  I would have thought that applied to ANY universal 3D format. For everything you might want to work, to work, the feature-set that must be implemented is truly mind-boggling.
  I can't imagine a format only supporting a subset of what USD does, ever becoming universal.
  
  What you said is patently wrong.
  As someone who works with USD daily digging through the bowels of the code and working with the format at a root level, it is 100% something that gaming should (and is) adopting. The Godot team would be frankly stupid not to put full native USD support as a high priority. The ability to store rigs, transform animation, and easily encapsulated asset variations alone makes the format godly. It is also very clean in how it manages asset linking and scenegraphs which makes traversal a breeze to encode. Also, it makes an DCC agnostic format which allows game developers to engage with freelance artists and not care what they use. Houdini, Blender, Maya, C4D, and any future DCC are going to be able to export to it. Hell, Houdini (my preferred DCC) has an entire context dedicated exclusively to working with, rendering, and exporting USD format.
- https://xkcd.com/927/

18 comments