Using FaceFX with Blender FBX files

Blender FBX support has improved dramatically in recent releases, and with some tinkering, you can read Blender-created FBX files in FaceFX, and load FaceFX-created FBX files in Blender.

Unfortunately, texture file names do not appear to be present in Blender-created FBX files (2.78c), so to see textures in FaceFX Studio, you have to modify the Ogre .MATERIAL files by hand. To do this, follow these steps:

1) Put your FBX and .facefx files in the same directory.
2) Drag your FBX file onto the {Studio Installation}/utils/ExecFxOgreFBX.exe file
3) This will create OGRE files in your FBX/.facefx directory. Open the .MATERIAL file in a text editor.
4) Add the missing "texture_unit" section to each material, and correctly specify the correct texture file name like so:

material "my_blender_material"
        ambient 0 0 0 1
        diffuse 1 1 1 1
        specular 0 0 0 0
        emissive 0 0 0
          texture my_texture_name.png
          tex_coord_set 0
          colour_op modulate
          scale 1 1
          scroll 0 0
          rotate 0

5) Add the following lines before the texture_unit to any transparent materials:

  scene_blend alpha_blend
  depth_write off

6) Save the modified .MATERIAL file.
7) Load the .facefx file in FaceFX Studio
8) Go to Actor->Change Render Asset
9) Specify the name of your FBX file/Ogre files (without the .fbx or any other extension)
10) Save your .facefx file
11) open your .facefx file. Textures should be loaded.

To load FaceFX-created FBX files in Blender, you will have to export a legacy FBX file format from FaceFX Studio. From the FBX export wizard in FaceFX 2017, specify "Legacy" as the "Output format" and set the FBX SDK file format identifier to 3. This can then be converted in the FBX 2013.3 converter into the FBX 2013 format which should load in Blender