FBX SDK

I've been having fun with FBX SDK. FBX SDK is seemingly well documented but what you really need are not so much. I'll write some of them I found briefly (I could write them much more in detail but not sure if the licence grants it). I didn't write basic stuff which you can find easily, I rather focused on the data structure. The FBX SDK version I used is 6.1.0


- KFbxLink is obsolete. If you find it in a document, the document is old.

Now KFbxLink is a typedef of KFbxCluster. But in the KFbxCluster document and method name, a "link" (typically seems to) means a node which has a KFbxSkeletion object as its attribute.

- A patch has no information on deformation (skeleton, etc.) by any means.

- A skeleton has no information on geometry (patch, etc.) by any means.

- A cluster connects a patch and a skeleton. It has control point weights, as well as its binding information such as transform matrix of a patch and transform matrix of a skeleton. which are all kept in the world coordinate.

You can register
a skin to a Node that has KFbxGeometry with AddDeformer(), and
a cluster to a skin with AddCluster(), and
a node that has KFbxSkeleton to a cluster with SetLink()

- You can get the transform matrix of the patch with GetTransformMatrix() which is used to bind the patch and the skeleton (not animation)

- You can get the transform matrix of the skeleton with GetTransformLinkMatrix() which is used to bind the patch and the skeleton (not animation)

- A cluster doesn't have a skeleton animation data.

- A node itself can have its animation data, not somewhere else.

More precisely, A node can have multiple KFbxTakeNode objects and each KFbxTakeNode object can contain a set of animation curves which are needed for the animation of the node corresponding to the take.

- Every KFbxTakeNode has its name in it. The whole animation of a take is obtained by summarizing all the information each node has in its KFbxTakeNode corresponding to the take (which is identified by the take name).