Testing collections using Nvidia ORCA Amazon Bistro asset

Blender 2.80 introduced the concept of Collections, replacing the earlier previously defined concepts  called layers and groups. I looked around and found a free asset called Amazon Lumberyard Bistro from the nVIDIA ORCA website that I found to be a good candidate to organize using Blender's collections.

The asset package contained two fbx files, one ascii and the other binary.

The exterior asset loaded fine using the Import FBX operator but the interior one failed. It happens that ascii FBX files are not supported by Blender's FBX importer.

Coincidentally just the day before, I had came across the following tweet that announced an MIT licensed FBX format  converter tool.

Thank you so much for this. I just used your tool to convert an FBX ascii file to binary. One of the #ORCAAmazonBistro files is in ascii and #b3d obviously does not import it. (https://t.co/sbl4vU8PvA) pic.twitter.com/W6hGWtgiUl

— Satish Goda (@satishgoda) March 27, 2020

I downloaded that tool and then used it to convert the ascii FBX file to binary and then imported it into Blender.

I then started organizing part of the Bistro interior using linked collections. Linked collections let you have the same object(s) in more than one collection at a time.

 As you can see from the screenshot above,

1. The original objects imported using FBX operator are not organized and appear as a flat hierarchy.
2. You can see how I started organizing the imported objects in a logical manner using linked collections.

I posted my progress on Twitter and was delighted to see that it gathered some interest from the community.

#b3d Linked collections can be used to non-destructively organize a messy hierarchy. Here you can see me building an abstraction of the #ORCAAmazonBistro asset (https://t.co/sbl4vU8PvA) pic.twitter.com/kZrJGemx5x

— Satish Goda (@satishgoda) March 28, 2020

Testing #b3d #eevee lighting with #ORCAAmazonBistro (I created a custom keymap for switching the view3d shading render passes, very convenient). Some notes about the initial setup of the scene are available on my blog https://t.co/3R0OQTXzK0 pic.twitter.com/Tha4ht5rgy

— Satish Goda (@satishgoda) March 30, 2020

I am planning to fully organize the Bistro asset using collections and then create a video tutorial for the masses.

Thank you, 
 -------------------
Satish Goda
@satishgoda