Home > Supported File Formats > Revit to FBX

How to convert Revit (.rvt,.rfa) to FBX (FilmBox v5/v6/v7,.fbx)?

PolyTrans|CAD+DCC performs mathematically precise CAD, DCC/Animation, GIS and BIM 3D file conversions into all key downstream 3D packages and file formats. Okino software is used and trusted throughout the world by many tens of thousands of 3D professionals in mission & production critical environments, backed by respectable personal support directly from our core development team.

Revit

Autodesk Revit is a building information modelling software tool for architects, landscape architects, structural engineers, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) engineers, designers and contractors. The software allows users to design a building and structure and its components in 3D, annotate the model with 2D drafting elements, and access building information from the building model's database.

Revit is a key and core product from which Okino customers often receive and/or coordinate their data files. At Okino we have spent the good part of 2 decades writing our DWF-3D importer specifically to import large, textured files from Revit models.

Note: you would ideally pre-center the model at the origin and pre-scale the model to be of a "sane size" within Revit before exporting the DWF-3D file for Okino software consumption. This will ensure that the model displays properly in your final destination 3D software.

FBX

FBX is a 3D 'digital asset interchange' file format that had been pushed on the 3D industry by Autodesk after they acquired it from the bankruptcy assets of its prior owners, Alias Research and Kaydara of Canada. FBX has its placed in the DCC/Animation world but it does have its limitations, given that it is a closed and proprietary file format of Autodesk.

Note: if you are one of the many people who use FBX to convert data out of Navisworks, Revit, AutoCAD or Inventor then please use DWF-3D file format and Okino's DWF-3D import converter instead. It is a night and day difference but little known except to our core Okino users. Likewise, use our native program support for 3ds Max, Maya and Cinema-4D rather than use FBX.

FBX supports all the common attributes of a DCC/Animation file format such as mesh geometry with vertex normals and vertex colors, non-solids NURBS ('old school NURBS'), lights, cameras, hierarchy, bones and mesh skinning (deformations), materials and textures. In basic terms, it is similar to the capabilities of the COLLADA and VRML2/X3D file formats, and to Okino's long standard BDF data translation file format.

Okino has a very long history associated with FBX as it created the very first and fully implemented set of FBX import and export converters in 2002, with full animation, skinning and trimmed NURBS support. This was long before anyone had much heard of FBX. And to this very day we are still the only company that actively ships and supports FBX v5 (Kaydara), v6 (Alias) and v7 (Autodesk). However, FBX was just one of many 'not invented here' file formats which came to glut the 3D market in the 2005-2007 era, many of which petered away over time.

A key reason for its early adoption, throughout the 3D industry, was the availability of a free and officially supported (but closed) FBX SDK from Autodesk.

The downsides of the FBX file format is that (1) it has stagnated in recent years, (2) it is based on a legacy material model and not on modern PBR, (3) it is based on legacy lighting models and not on physically based lighting, and (4) it is a closed file format which only Autodesk can update or change. Otherwise, these restrictions have made it easier for software developers to implement FBX just once and then not have to worry about costly yearly revisions.

DWF import converter's overview

FBX export converter's overview