pyfbx

A simple-to-use wrapper for Autodesk Python FBX SDK.

Credit to @jochasinga for the original library.

FBX

FBX(Filmbox) is a proprietary file format (.fbx) developed by Kaydara and owned by Autodesk since 2006. It is used to provide interoperability between digital content creation applications.

from Wikipedia

Why another wrapper?

I have had a chance to work on a project which needed Python to generate FBX file for Maya. Autodesk did a rather poor job at its Python FBX SDK such as:

• Lack of documentation
• C-style APIs instead of Pythonic
• Tedious wrapper classes i.e. FbxDouble3 to wrap around C++ array.

Why build ANOTHER wrapper?

Simple put, having to compile and build FBX was a nightmare so I thought I'd provide the appropriate platform for people to fork and add their own distributions.

This is specifically, right now, for Win 32 bit, but can easily be built for linux too (will just need to test)

How it works

Classes in pyfbx does not inherit the original classes from the SDK. Each instance of the class have a private property _me which interact with the original class's instance while pyfbx "floats" above i.e.

from pyfbx import *

manager = Manager()
scene = Scene(manager)
assert isinstance(scene, pyfbx.Scene)       # True
assert isinstance(scene._me, fbx.FbxScene)  # True

Install

git clone https://github.com/nannafudge/pyfbx
cd pyfbx && python setup.py install

Examples

from pyfbx import * 

manager = Manager()
scene = Scene(manager)
node = Node(manager)
mesh = Mesh(manager)

# Set mesh attributes 

node.add_attribute(mesh)
scene.root_node.add_child(node)

However, since Manager and Scene is a singleton in charge of all the nodes, it makes sense for them to be atomic.

manager = Manager()
manager.create_scene()    # equivalent to `Scene(manager)`
manager.create_node()     # equivalent to `Node(manager)`
scene = manager.scene
scene.create_node()       # equivalent to `Node(scene)

Node Tree

FBX depends on node hierachy, with the scene's root node acting as the descendent of all. While you can always use the underlying API to traverse through nodes in the scene, Node also keeps track of its children using simple list.

from pyfbx import *

manager = Manager()
p_node = Node(manager, "parent_node")
node.add_child(Node(manager, "child_node_1"))
node.add_child(Node(manager, "child_node_2"))

assert p_node.children[0].name == "child_node_1"

c_node_1 = node.children[0]
c_node_1.add_child(Node(manager, "grandchild_node"))

assert p_node.children[0].children[0].name == "grandchild_node"