FBFbxOptions() - .ASCIIFormat output NOT working

[Anonymous]

Hey All,

1. Start motionbuilder, Create just a cube (or any other simple object for that matter).

2. Use the below code in the python editor to save out the file in ASCII file format (just a snippet from autodesk own examples).

app = FBApplication()

# Set options to save a scene
# Initialize options
options = FBFbxOptions(False)

# set all
options.SetAll(FBElementAction.kFBElementActionSave, True)

# Save the scene in ascci format
options.UseASCIIFormat = True

app.FileSave( "C:\\just\\a_temp\\location\\tempfile.fbx", options)

3. After save open "tempfile.fbx" in your favorite text editor. Its still a binary file. Not the small type of bug in my opinion.

If I instead go the manual save approach, i.e "File -> SaveAs -> Select ASCII output -> and save" the output file indeed ends up being a proper ASCII based file. What is going on here!?

Some more background; I just recently had the time to start converting a whole slew of tools for newer versions of motionbuilder. Been a couple of years since previous update. So the above "bug" is for the moment in motionbuilder 2016 SP 1 and not for the absolute newest version. With that said this is quite a big foul-up in my opinion and it has huge effects when much functionality relies on being able to (decently simple at least) modify the output fbxes to very specific purposes in automation (more so then the standard interface allows). Big and small.

Now given the fact that this is for one iteration version back for MB I don't expect much to happen in terms of fixing sadly for 2016, however, could be possible still with 2017 version maybe (or the upcoming version in a few months maybe) if this is still a problem in the 2017 as well.

So question is, has anyone tried the above in 2017 and can verify that the ASCII export via python is indeed working in 2017? Or is it broken there too?

Autodesk Admins; Should I report this as a bug even though I haven't actually tested in the newest version? Which I assume is the only version you guys actually do any bug fixing for at this time?

/Matte

[Anonymous]

My tests:

Could reproduce bug in 2016 SP1.

Works correctly in 2017.

[Anonymous]

phscatena; Good to hear, that it seems to work in 2017, and many thanks for doing a quick test. One less thing to think about, if and when, the time comes to switch to 2017. Thx for checking.

So if there is someone else that needs to stick to 2016 for a while for whatever other reason, here is the workaround I concocted that works;

No point in trying to write a ASCII version directly from MB, since it only spits out a binary anyway. So do just that. Write out a temp binary fbx in file format 2013 from motionbuilder itself. Download the standalone FBX Converter 2013.3 (can be found on autodesks website). Read the temp file you just created with the command line tool bundled with the converter and output a proper ASCII fbx for continued processing. All this would be scripted/coded actions of course.

/Matte