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Question FBX/USD/glTF formats future plans?

Discussion in 'Content Pipeline Dev Blitz Day 2023 - Q&A' started by aras-p, Jun 8, 2023.

  1. aras-p

    aras-p

    Unity Legend

    Joined:
    Feb 17, 2022
    Posts:
    67
    It would be really useful to know what are the plans and roadmap for geometry/scene/animations/... import formats. Unity does seem to mention e.g. "we have big plans for USD!" in some GDC talk or similar, but then that's followed by radio silence.

    FBX
    It's probably safe to say that FBX is a "dead end" -- it likely won't get any big (or at all) updates from Autodesk. That said, it's so pervasive that Unity will keep on supporting it for years to come. That's fine, it kinda works. It would be nice if importing was faster (in my experiments I had good experience with ufbx library - much smaller than official FBX SDK, can actually import in parallel, the API is nice and the source code is available).

    USD
    There is official USD package that is last updated 1.5 years ago (3.0exp2, 2021 Sept). The github project of the same package does seem to have some activity, but not a whole lot. What are the plans for it? And yeah I know that USD is a complex beast ("it's not a file format, it's a composition engine" etc. etc.), but knowing the plan would help.

    Suggestion: put USD support as built-in into the editor, and have a clear and public roadmap for it.

    glTF
    Does Unity support glTF or not? Who knows! There is glTFast that seems to be good, is "sponsored" by Unity, but nothing about the project implies that this is what Unity would endorse. There's also Siccity/GLTFUtility, KhronosGroup/UnityGLTF, Plattar/gltf-exporter "glTF for Unity, somehow" projects on github, and it's very hard to know which ones are "better" or "more official".

    Suggestion: take glTFast (or some other if that's "more official"?) and put that as built-in feature, i.e. not a package.

    "It's in some package somewhere" topic

    FBX is built-in functionality, and for me as a user, that has no downsides as far as I can see. If it was in some package, it would be way worse. I'd argue that for non-niche formats (like USD and glTF), having them built-in into the unity editor would be much more useful and discoverable. Things like "export USD / glTF from the editor" and "runtime support for USD / glTF" are fine to keep as optional packages, but ingesting files into the editor would be much better if it was "just there". It would be much clearer that yes, Unity supports that.

    There's only one possible downside that I can see from user's POV: if the built-in support is written in such a way where it has a non-zero editor iteration overhead (script recompile / domain reload time, etc.).
     
    sacb0y and vertxxyz like this.
  2. Schmunkee

    Schmunkee

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Sep 4, 2013
    Posts:
    3
    Hey Aras,

    Thanks for your questions and feedback!

    Believe me, the radio silence regarding USD is killing us! We look forward to sharing more around that as soon as we can. In the meantime, I can offer some context on the experimental USD package you're referring to. As you noticed from the GitHub project activity, we are fixing the most critical bugs, so it remains usable while a new official USD solution is on its way.

    There is so much happening in the realm of content file formats/platforms these days. We are paying close attention and taking the necessary steps to make sure Unity continues to be a great platform for RT3D/2D content in the future – also as requirements for content change and as pipelines and ecosystems evolve. Really look forward to share more about our roadmaps, but holding off until our "new ships" set sail.

    Rest assured, speeding up import time is a big point of focus for us.
     
    sacb0y and Yoraiz0r like this.