Godot Has A New FBX Importer... And It's FASSSSSST!

With the upcoming release of Godot 4.3, a major new feature has been added to Godot, FBX support. But "Mike, Godot already has FBX support" you might be yelling at the screen, and yes... you're right. But this is different in 3 ways... 1, its built in 2, its a completely different implementation with different results and 3, it's fast, very fast.

So in this video we look at FBX importing, the old way and the new way and see how well it does or doesn't work.

Links

Synty Bundle from Demo:

Sketchfab Model:

Timeline:
0:00 Introduction
0:15 Godot 4.3 Dev 4 Details
0:45 Assets Used Synty and Sketchfab
1:25 Working with FBX in Godot 4.2
2:24 FBX2glTF
6:00 Workign with FBX in Godot 4.3
9:10 Manually creating FBX Textures
12:50 UFBX the library that makes this all possible

[gamefromscratch]

Links

Synty Bundle from Demo:

Sketchfab Model:

Timeline:
0:00 Introduction
0:15 Godot 4.3 Dev 4 Details
0:45 Assets Used Synty and Sketchfab
1:25 Working with FBX in Godot 4.2
2:24 FBX2glTF
6:00 Workign with FBX in Godot 4.3
9:10 Manually creating FBX Textures
12:50 UFBX the library that makes this all possible

[gostan]

A New FBX Importer without crashing the engine? Imposible!!!

[Beryesa.]

FBX is kind of broken on purpose by Autodesk with each version, if you're free to use open tools like Blender, stick with open formats 😅

[slygamer]

Thank goodness! All of my extensive asset collection are in FBX format, and importing into Godot was a huge pain.

[VictorEstivadorebarbudo]

this is cool but hope the GLTF export in blender get better and the no proprietary option keep growing. FBX is cool but not that perfect.

[Drejzer]

Always nice to see some good news about Godot!

[DarthBiomech]

Lack of the ability to import "the standard" 3d model format was my hugest obstacle in using Godot, basically preventing me from being able to work with it. So glad to see it finally being addressed!

[arkmagius]

If you don't want to have to nuke your settings every time you're comparing engine versions, you can put an empty file named ._sc_ in your Godot folder to make the installation self-contained.

(to make a file whose name starts with a dot in Windows, name it ._sc_. and the trailing dot will be removed when you confim)

[Zuriki]

If you have models without embedded textures, I feel like you're better served to manually re-export the model with embedded textures.

[Shazzner]

I think the reason the robot isn't importing correctly is because you changed the relative paths to the textures by coping them all into one folder.

[KenDesigns]

Really awesome to finally have a built-in solution for FBX. Just a bit disappointed that textures are still a problem. But one thing at a time. It's getting there! ^___^

[ViktorsJournal]

Another recommendation for how to add the materials. In the import window there's post import script where you can assign a script and with couple lines you can automatically load all the textures and prepare and assign the materials to your model, works with reimport too so if chagnes are made it's all fine. I've been using fbx models and adding the textures all the time is such a pain that I now default opt to this option.
UFBX also fixes couple issues which occur with fbx2gltf.

[jayrulez]

This is good news. Broken FBX import has always been one of the showstoppers every time I tried Godot.

[llareia]

Is it just me, or did the Synty materials come in with less specular in 4.3? They looked similar to what I'd expect from importing Synty into Unity (very matte).

[BarakoodaD]

USD or BLEND should be the next focus.

[zaxarner]

Why did the various materials "look" correct in the advanced import settings? At 11:47, you can see that the "arms" material looks like it imported correctly. I get that one is embedded and the other isn't, but seems like a Godot issue, not an FBX or UFBX issue.

[MattEatsMochi]

how fast you count seconds is me when I forget to take my anxiety medication :D

[scribblingjoe]

I wonder what Synty is doing differently than everyone else.

[phir]

Speaking of FBX importers, recently I used Maya 2010 and the FBX importer there is completely incompatible with today's models.

[cullencanejo]

The 4.3 importer is missing the window texture on the gas station compared to the 4.2 one. some other windows are affected as well.