Which model formats are best?

michi.be

I finished a good amount of model in my small asset shop and want to convert my models into other formats as well.
I think the most used game-engines like Unity and follow-ups should be included too.

Now are there any batch exporters for .fbx, .obj, 3ds or collada? Its a real jungle of formats....
Which file formats do you guys suggest? Most of my models got multi-sub textures (diff,norm,spec) and of course uv's.

I'm not sure if it's legal to sell assets in Cryengine or Unreal format? Because I use their tech to earn money. Dont know....

r_fletch_r

Id stick with OBJ and filmbox, 3DS is an ancient retarded piece of shit. I cant comment on collada as i dont really use it.

Unreal now supports fbx directly and any modern CC app can handle OBJ.

Eric Chadwick

UDK has a horribly-limiting license agreement... they say no commercial use whatsoever, not even derivative works (models, levels, etc.).

But yeah, OBJ is the most widely-used format, in my experience. FBX next after that, it supports more features than OBJ, but less programs support FBX so....

renderhjs

1. OBJ
2. FBX
3. DAE

I'd place OBJ at first because it supports all the important things for static objects and it is supported by all 3D applications it is still now the kind of standard to exchange between most apps.
If you have a recent Autodesk app like Maya, Max or Mudbox changes are that FBX might do a pretty good job. I though had frequently trouble myself with FBX like flipped Y/Z axis, lost face normals and a few other bugs - it seems that Autodesk still needs to iron out some of the bugs which they do. So whenever FBX fails OBJ usually is the format to rely on at least.


And yes *.3ds is just like *.ai outdated and not well documented or at least changes all the time. So whenever a application supports 3ds changes are things are not read well or not at all. Also 3ds is not available as a ASCI format which makes it less popular among developers to support and use in their tools.

michi.be

Ok and what about .x format? I see some Indy-engines use it.

dubcanada

.X is a DirectX format by Windows, which if you ask me is absolutly horrible.

I'd have to agree with Render.

Also, not sure what you mean about the UDK license agreement but it is not limited to freeware, you just have to pay licensing fees.

commander_keen

I would say obj, max, ma, ase, fbx

obj is an extremely simple format, but it also has many variations, for instance some exporters may not include normals or may use smoothing groups instead, and another exporter might include custom data like multiple uv channels.

My experience with fbx importers and exporters has been very bad. Going from maya to max without crashing can take a bit of tweaking export settings so i wouldnt call it a good format. I also tried importing a maya 2010 fbx into UDK and UDK failed to import it without even attempting to load the file.

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, I meant the UDK license for the free version, the one you have to Accept when you install it (\UDK\UDK-2010-03\Binaries\InstallData\EULA.INT.rtf). If you sell assets, you have to pay licensing fees, which it sounds like the OP is not.

commander_keen wrote: »

I would say obj, max, ma, ase, fbx

Max is not an export/interchange format though.

renderhjs

ASE is the ASCI version of 3ds but it is dated. For some reason unreal has been supporting it since it's early years and even recent versions of their engine still rely on the old framework thus some stuff gets only well imported with ASE.
Never the less I would not suggest ASE as Unreal is the only big engine that I know that supports it - anything else goes towards DAE (official PS3 format + XML based).

But this is all based on a developers perspective - like making things work in the pipeline. But you seem to have something else in mind which is selling and if you try to sell I would bang out any format you can export. Maybe even get a trial of Milkshape and add another 10 unique formats just so that anyone that buys your digital files can open at least 1 file type.