2. It is a closed format. They have (as yet) not published the specifications for either the ascii or binary versions, and have declared there is no plans to do so.
3. Some 3rd party support of the .fbx format (and most 3d modellers do now export it) has been acheived by reverse engineering .fbx ascii exported files.
3. Some 3rd party support of the .fbx format (and most 3d modellers do now export it) has been acheived by reverse engineering .fbx ascii exported files.
Are you out of your mind? Take a look at the end of my post.
It is the only interchangeable format widely used in the industry: EVERY major modeller supports it, and support is always kept up to date. Of course the specifications are public even if it is closed source and it DOES NOT require any kind of reverse engineering (it is even against the license). And when I say industry I don't mean only the game industry, but the entire CG industry.
Autodesk acquired the format among with Alias, and Alias in the past acquired Kaydara (the former developer of fbx). The format was already a standard when Autodesk bought it, as it was when Alias bought Kaydara.
To clear things up, Mark Sibly should only have to create a converter from FBX to his proprietary format. This way, every major modeller would be supported in a single stroke, including future ones. It's a lot better than writing lots of different exporters, without the burden to update them regularly too.
From here you can download the SDK:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/mform?siteID=123112&id=10775847