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Post your wishes about Graphisoft products: Archicad, BIMx, BIMcloud, and DDScad.

FBX Export Archicad 25

Coulouri
Contributor

Is there at plan to give us the option to export to FBX in the future?
I see that many users talk about it but turn it to that there now is a solution to it by Datasmith to use with Twinmotion. But not all of us work with Twinmotion.

I work with 3D Studio/VRay and Unreal for many of our projects and sure Datasmith is nice to have in Archicad, but not to have the chance to export to FBX for 3D Studio or Blender is really a bummer. To not have the opportunity to have linked projects with FBX-files makes revisions a really hard days work.

FBX-Files is used by many 3D software and gives Archicad projects the chance to go in many different ways for presentation to clients. To just say we have Datasmith is to say that we only work with Twinmotion and Unreal, I don't just want to work with those, I want my projects to have the opportunity to expand in many other 3D applications. 

Maybe I missed something but I cant find the Export FBX anywhere.

86 REPLIES 86
Zaahir
Participant

What I do is save-as file to AC24, it says some data is lost, but that is only to do with layout spaces in my understanding. AC 24 still has the save as .fbx. I understand the inconvenience of AC24 serving merely as an fbx exporter in this case, but try this till something better comes up.

Soring001
Participant

I use Twinmotion with Archicad. Even in Twinmotion FBX files works better then Datasmith files. Now I cant use Archicad 25 because the quality of my Twinmotion renderings are not getting good enough with Datasmith. Really frustrating. 

Graphisoft's silence on this is DEAFENING!

Rex Maximilian, Honolulu, USA - www.rexmaximilian.com
ArchiCAD 27 (user since 3.4, 1991)
16" MacBook Pro; M1 Max (2021), 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 32-Core GPU
Apple Vision Pro w/ BIMx
Creator of the Maximilian ArchiCAD Template System

I was meeting with a game developer yesterday and we were discussing my creating architectural assets for their gaming environment. When they asked what format I would be supplying, I told them I'd have to get back to them.

 

The world is advancing. The "meta verse" is not just a buzz word, but a legitimate space that architects are now finding, and will continue to find, work. How are we going to be competitive in these emerging markets if Graphisoft won't listen to its users and provide us with the tools we need. Graphisoft is now increasing the price of its ArchiPLUS subscription, or whatever it's called, without any new technologies in this realm (nor in the AR market)... or at least fixing the ones they broke!

BIMx models still look terrible and flat (when it used to look great), and now we have no method of saving to the industry standard FBX for digital assets.

Fix this PLEASE Graphisoft.

My question to others here who are providing digital assets for a broad market, what formats are you using and what process. All I know to do now is save it as SKP and then open it in SketchUp to fix any translation errors, then export to FBX. Soon, I'll just start modeling is SketchUp from the start.

It's a shame I have to have a SketchUp license "solely" for this purpose... when a $5000 product with a yearly $880 subscription fee can't do something this simple.

Rex Maximilian, Honolulu, USA - www.rexmaximilian.com
ArchiCAD 27 (user since 3.4, 1991)
16" MacBook Pro; M1 Max (2021), 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 32-Core GPU
Apple Vision Pro w/ BIMx
Creator of the Maximilian ArchiCAD Template System

I agree with Rex Maximilian. I work with architecture visualisation and our office is staying with Archicad 24 because of this issue with the fbx-format. There is a lot of work to be done if we were to change workflow. Any news on Archicad 26 and fbx  yet?

We just upgraded our projects from ac22 to ac25 in our office (we have approx. 40 licenses) and realized the lack of the fbx-exporter. This is a huge problem, since all our premium visualizations have been using the pipeline of exporting to fbx and then linking it to 3ds max. The benefit of linking is that updating the model is very fast since you don't have to set up materials and additional settings again each time the design changes.

 

In ac25 for very large projects all the other export options take ages to finally get to an fbx. In one of our largest projects saving as fbx used to take under a minute in ac22 for the building and about 15 minutes for saving detailed furniture in a separate view. In ac25 the only "fast" way is saving to rhino-file first and then fbx from there. This will take at least half an hour for the building alone. I gave up waiting on how long the furniture would take after an hour. But the biggest problem is that I can't save from rhino fbx-model that is split by material. With sketchup and blender importing a dae-file had been going on for an hour when I decided to surrender.
The only real option for now is saving a pln in Archicad first to ac24 and an fbx from there. (And in the future ac26->ac25->ac24 etc.)

I can't emphasize enough how good and important the previous fbx-exporter was. It was fast, easy and reliable. I'm sure this is a significant problem for all the archviz artists using 3ds max. I sincerely ask you to seriously consider to reimplement fbx-exporter in the future.

exactly how I work, not being able to have a link with an FBX in 3D Studio breaks the whole work flow. 

Would someone from Graphisoft be able to provide a status update regarding this?

Rex Maximilian, Honolulu, USA - www.rexmaximilian.com
ArchiCAD 27 (user since 3.4, 1991)
16" MacBook Pro; M1 Max (2021), 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 32-Core GPU
Apple Vision Pro w/ BIMx
Creator of the Maximilian ArchiCAD Template System

For what it's worth even REVIT can export to FBX (Archicad's closest peer rival).

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2019/ENU/Revit-D...

Rex Maximilian, Honolulu, USA - www.rexmaximilian.com
ArchiCAD 27 (user since 3.4, 1991)
16" MacBook Pro; M1 Max (2021), 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 32-Core GPU
Apple Vision Pro w/ BIMx
Creator of the Maximilian ArchiCAD Template System
JesperJ
Contributor

We are still not using AC25.

 

Best option seems to be .obj for now but it is much slower. Had to make a script in blender to clean the messy geometry but at least it saves the surfaces names and UVs for all objects. 

 

DAE seems to give better geometry with export but looses UVs for objects that don't have a texture and don't save names of surfaces which makes reimporting a real hassle 

 

It is crazy that a "professional" BIM program can’t export it’s geometry in an industry standard format such as FBX to enable its users to use more advanced rendering programs with ease. And no, we won’t switch to simple programs like Twinmotion or enscape we need a way of reliably exporting to industry standard programs such as Blender, 3DS Max, C4D.

Master's degree in Architectural Engineering & Architectural Visualizer
Main PC: 5950X, 64 GB RAM, 3090 & 1660ti
2nd PC: i7 9700K, 32 GB RAM & 3080