Hello, does anyone happen to know if different 3D modeling programs, specifically Maya and Autodesk's 3ds Max, save their files, or can export them, in a universal format that can be opened in any 3D modeling software or are they program specific?
3D modeling save files confusion
FBX is a propietary format by Autodesk which can also be used for Max, Maya and some other tools.
You can export your files as DAE or OBJ. Those are quite common formats that are supported by a lot of tools.
FBX is a propietary format by Autodesk which can also be used for Max, Maya and some other tools.
Thank you very much!
Autodesk also has a FBX SDK with which you can load such models in your own programs. The format itself is not the simplest possible one out there, though.
Niko Suni
You can export your files as DAE or OBJ.
A nice thing about OBJs is that it is a text based format, which is fairly human readable.
Therefore it is easy enough to write your own tools to generate/manipulate OBJ models.
Never export to .OBJ. It is an extremely outdated format and poorly suited for games, while not properly supported across all modeling software. It will be the reason for a lot of loss of information from one software to another.
.FBX and .DAE (COLLADA) are the only formats you should be considering.
L. Spiro
I restore Nintendo 64 video-game OST’s into HD! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCtX_wedtZ5BoyQBXEhnVZw/playlists?view=1&sort=lad&flow=grid
Never export to .OBJ. It is an extremely outdated format and poorly suited for games, while not properly supported across all modeling software. It will be the reason for a lot of loss of information from one software to another.
.FBX and .DAE (Collada) are the only formats you should be considering.
L. Spiro
Increasingly COLLADA is the only format you should consider, although if you live entirely in the Autodesk ecosystem, FBX is the defacto standard. Moving outside that ecosystem, COLLADA is generally the way to go.
Thanks to the assimp open source library, supporting these various formats isn't quite the insane chore it used to be.