Simplygon (automatic LOD generation software) is now a cloud service and is free for personal use.
https://www.simplygon.com/pricing/#cloud
What’s cool about it is that now you can generate LODs remotely and get FBX or OBJ output. Which means there is another good reason to have solid FBX importing functionality into Blender (unless Blender can rival Simplygon in that sector).
You make it sounds like Blender is not trying on fbx support.
I was rather under the impression that it’s difficult and slow to implement, but not that it’s not taken seriously, or that it involves any real debate, so I don’t see the point behind the phrasing of this thread’s topic title at all.
Last time I heard FBX import was behind FBX export. And I am not implying Blender doesn’t take FBX support seriously. I am just showing where else it can be applied besides exchanging scenes between Autodesk 3D apps and Blender.
It is, the fact that it is closed source and the fact that the SDK is incompatible with the GPL means that the process of developing a good I/O for the format is a slog and requires such crappy jobs as trying to reverse-engineer the format (which I hear is legal in Europe).
Autodesk is able to do this because every attempt so far to create a comprehensive open source standard has more or less burned to the ground, the mailing list talked about a team trying this again by creating a format known as OpenGEX, but Ton right now is skeptical on whether or not it will succeed.
Now as I suggested, the .fbx format is owned by Autodesk, and there has been indication before that they are doing what they can to make sure that Blender will never be able to become a major force in the industry by making small changes here and there that they can communicate to commercial vendors, but will not benefit Blender.
@Ace: Last time I read/wrote about SDK there were no issues using it, except it would have to be downloaded and installed separately from Blender, it’s Windows only afaik and developers claim that using SDK will not help them making better IO FBX add-on (because there is no documentation about all of the aspects of the format).
When C4 engine will beat UE4 engine and Unity, then maybe, just maybe OpenGEX will be look upon as a valid industry standard. I am sure it’s valid if Maya/Max/Motionbuilder/etc. have IO plugins for OpenGEX. That would allow to exchange animated data between Blender and those apps. However, there are more cases, such as SpeedTree, Simplygon, etc. that output into FBX. What are you going to do about that, if there is no robust FBX IO, but awesome OpenGEX ?
The FBX importer needs to be improved because you heard (?!) the importer is behind the exporter…
The developers consciously decided not to use the SDK, because it doesn’t solve the problems they are having. Those issues are mostly the compatibility among different versions of FBX if I remember correctly. I have seen many Max and Maya users having exactly that issue with the compatibility who tried to import the models into Unity. All of those applications are using the official SDK, but the issue was still there.
I trust the Blender developers that they used their brain when they made the decision. I don’t believe that we as users should tell the Blender developers how they need to solve certain technical issues. They are working on it, they understand the difficulties and they have to be the ones who make the decisions, especially if it is about such technical questions.