The mainstream file formats for 3D models were proprietary, and they were all reverse-engineered. Then, the open “fbx format” appeared on the scene.
fbx is “open”
.fbx can store multiple models and animations, while .obj can only store 3D models. In other words, a model can store a whole scene.
There are many versions of fbx, and it is evolving very fast.
- FBX 6.x — FBX 2006, FBX 2009, FBX 2010
- FBX 7.1 — FBX 2011
- FBX 7.2 — FBX 2012
- FBX 7.3 — FBX 2013
- FBX 7.4 — FBX 2014
- FBX 7.5 FBX 2016/2017
- FBX 2018
The UE4 FBX import pipeline uses FBX 2018. Using a different version during export may result in incompatibilities.
Blender 2.80 and later only support the FBX 7.x binary format. The FBX ASCII format was removed in commit
it seems Unity supports 2017 as importer and exporter