San Francisco, Calif. - Autodesk Inc. and Epic Games Inc. have collaborated to provide greater connectivity between Autodesk's art creation and animation tools and Epic's Unreal Engine 3, using Autodesk FBX data interchange technology. Autodesk FBX 2011 is designed to offer a faster, more streamlined workflow for transferring content created in Autodesk Maya 2011 and Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 software into Unreal Engine 3--helping boost production efficiency and preserve creative intent.
New for Unreal Engine 3 licensees and Unreal Development Kit (UDK) users is an FBX importer that enables game developers to import FBX files created in Maya or 3ds Max directly into the Unreal Editor. The importer automatically breaks files down into assets in the Unreal Editor, such as level of detail (LOD) information, animations, character meshes, character rigs, and models. In addition, if a 3D model is updated in 3ds Max or Maya, a new FBX file can be imported into the Unreal Editor where the assets will be automatically refreshed.
"Working with Epic Games, we have taken the once labor-intensive task of importing 3D content into a game engine and turned it into a one-click workflow," says Marc Stevens, Autodesk vice president, Games. "Autodesk software and middleware is designed to integrate into a wide range of games pipelines. We are working in cooperation with leading games companies like Epic to help improve the connectivity between our tools and their engines - making game authoring simpler and more efficient."