This is amazing news.
As someone trying to get into 3D gamedev, Blender has been an integral part of my pipeline, although I’m still struggling with some of its aspects.
I know the scope of this project is not that big, but I’ll take the opportunity to mention most of my pain points. Disclaimer: I’m self-taught and still relatively new at this.
In terms of level creation, there are some rough edges that can be improved upon. The common modelling tools are not designed for this kind of workflow, and many plugins are needed: Texel Density checkers, Auto UV Project, Baking, etc.
PassiveStar has been working on turning Blender into something like Hammer, the Source Engine level builder. His input here would be essential I believe. Some official support for this use case would be amazing. His quick menu addon is very handy and makes the workflow very fast indeed.
In terms of asset handling, more support for online libraries would be ideal. Right now, any assets in a library need to be downloaded, which is fine, but there are also different standards on how assets are built that don’t translate well.
I’d say my biggest issue when exporting asset libraries into Godot is that every asset has to be superposed in the world origin, as Godot uses world origin as object origin.
Furthermore, many 3D models have to be put into collections to be turned into an asset because they are composed of several meshes. However, .gltf export does not support collections, so Godot does not see them, and some degree of restructuring (reparenting, empties, etc.) needs to be added.
For assets that share textures, it would be ideal to be able to choose which folder to drop the textures in when exporting, as currently it is required that textures are in the same folder than the .gltf, which can bloat folders very quickly, and using .glb instead of .gltf is heavily discouraged, since sharing textures is a must to keep file size and memory usage at a minimum.
Sometimes I’ve run into issues with UV maps and textures from Blender to Godot. Granted, this happened with assets exported from Unreal Engine, which is probably the cause, but the underlying issue was not easy to understand, which leads to much trial and error. Eventually I figured that these assets had two UV maps, and Blender would render the textures perfectly, whereas Godot would only see one of the UV maps and discard the other, leading to funky textures. I still do not know why Godot cannot read the second UV map even if it has support for 2 UVs.
One simple functionality that would be useful is to be able to choose the resolution of the textures in the exported gltf file… AFAIK it’s not an option.
Regarding animations, I don’t have much experience; most of what I’ve done is using Mixamo. The pipeline has not been clear to me, and Mixamo is clearly not intended for the Godot pipeline, but I managed to make it work thanks to FinePointCGI’s video tutorial. Using Mixamo Root is essential for properly handling root motion and ensuring correct animation imports. Streamlining character rigging workflows, especially for game development, would be a significant improvement.
Additionally, I want to give a shout out to Michael Jared, who has developed a Blender-to-Godot add-on, which aims to improve compatibility between the two platforms. As someone experienced in this area, his input is likely valuable.
That’s all I can remember right now. I realize much of what I’m talking about are shortcomings on Godot’s side, but it would help to talk about them since Godot communities in general have little to no experience with advanced 3D techniques and optimization, and more often than not, bringing up these issues results in almost zero feedback.
Therefore, I would appreciate any feedback or tips that simplify the process and automate some of the work. I’m still working on my pipeline and, ideally, I would like to be to download an asset pack and process each asset into two folders: the meshes folder and the textures folder. This allows for easy sharing of textures. I haven’t had any issues when making my own assets, but as a solo dev, having a clean asset packs pipeline is really helpful.
. But anyway, yes, there is a lot of overlap between us and I look forward to working on this together.