[x3d-public] X3D Model Archive Format

[Michalis Kamburelis]

2017-10-02 18:42 GMT+02:00 Leonard Daly <Leonard.Daly at realism.com>:
> A note on animation: FBX has established the standard (by use) of a single
> master timeline for all animations. Individual animations may occupy just a
> portion of that timeline.

The "single timeline" for all animations is a problem of the FBX format, indeed.

But it is not true that it "established a standard of a single
timeline for all animations", in my experience. And I am actually
working in the industry (with both my own engine, and Unity3d, and
three.js).

1. People (both artists and developers) expect a decent 3D format to
be able to contain many animations, and are surprised to find that FBX
doesn't. All other data formats (X3D, Collada, glTF, Spine, and all
proprietary software-specific formats) support multiple animations,
and people (rightly) expect this feature.

2. If they need to use FBX format, they workaround it: Unity3d allows
to export animations to a specially-named files like "aaa at walk.fbx",
which is interpreted as "walk" animation defined for "aaa.fbx". See
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Splittinganimations.html . Smart
people use it, and don't manually split a single timeline :)

Regards.
Michalis