Vlog 02: FbxLoader Fixes: Mixamo models now loading in jME!

Hi guys, Currently in jME there seem to be two loaders coexisting: an older SceneLoader and a more recent FbxLoader. The fixes I’ve been working on specifically target the FbxLoader configured by default in General.cfg.

Is it useful? I’d say “yes and no.” On one hand, services like Adobe Mixamo—widely used in Unity and Unreal tutorials—mainly provide animated models in FBX format (in various variants: binary, ASCII, 6.1, 7.4, Unity, etc.) and DAE. Unity and Unreal support FBX natively (not sure about the implementation details), while Godot relies on Assimp. MonkeyWrench also uses Assimp under the hood, but FBX results are not always optimal.

That said, the current jME FBX plugin seems fairly well structured. Since there are several web-based viewers (JS/TS) that handle FBX without major issues, I tried analyzing it to see whether it could be fixed. After several attempts and quite a bit of debugging (which basically drained my free budget ), I managed to isolate the root cause of the main issues, ruling out some initial wrong assumptions.

It’s worth noting that the plugin is somewhat outdated and relies on the old animation and lighting systems. Also, Mixamo models are not always “clean”: in some cases, small workarounds are needed (for example, opening the FBX in Blender and exporting textures manually, or using jME scripts to fix the RootBone position). Despite that, in most cases the loader works.

In general, even when using jME’s built-in glTF loader or MonkeyWrench, I’ve often had to apply manual fixes. So I’d say no plugin is truly 100% “plug-and-play” across all formats and models.

Given this, it might make sense not to deprecate the FBX loader, provided that the main parsing issues are addressed.

If we can also improve the animation/lighting system, we could achieve at least a minimal but solid level of support for Mixamo models—which, like it or not, are widely used. That would be a great improvement in terms of accessibility for jME, especially for beginners who don’t want (or can’t) rely on Blender right away or dive deep into format details.

ndebruyn:

Awesome job with this. Do you plan to push this as a fix to jME repo?

I’ll discuss this further with Riccardo to see what can be done.

adi.barda:

this FBX contains the model with the animation? what if I have this FBX file and 5 more FBX with animations only - can I attach and use the other 5 with the same model?

yes, all the models I tested are animated. I haven’t yet tested the plugin with a model that contains only animation data.