Should I use an OBJ. or FBX.

#1

I am working on a project with a team and we are making an animated short in Maya. We built some assets outside of the main file and they are comprised of multiple pieces in groups in the outliner in Maya. I am the “technical director” of the team, and I have done some reading and have seen that it is better to use FBX files because they hold all of the information needed. We have gotten to the stage to where we are compiling everything and we were instructed to reference these assets in. We have obj assets and fbx assets.

So my question is, once we have the references placed would we just import them in as FBX’s instead of the referenced objs. for rendering and having the scene work and function or would we continue to used the referenced files and not switch them just always have them referenced?

#2

Hey,
I am not sure if I 100% get your question but here is the way I work with the pipeline:
FBX vs OBJ is pretty “simple” fbx is more complicated but holds more informations like e.g. Animation, Skinweights, joints and more complex materials.
OBJ is less complicated and I would use it for models and objects that don’t have Animations,Skinweights etc…
When it comes to referencing it is more or less what you prefer most.
You can leave everything referenced while rendering the scene just in case you want to rerender it or redo the lighingt etc. OR if you want to minimize referencing errors you can import assets that are truly final before rendering(this also can safe render time but i am not 100% sure).

If you have assets from outside the maya pipeline i would bring them in as either fbx or obj (like i stated above), save them seperately in a maya scene and reference that maya scene.
This way if something is wrong with the fbx/obj file you don’t destroy your original scene.