Exporting an object from Blender to Unreal question

oraeles77

im dont usually do anything regarding exporting to game engines, i normally focus on modelling/texturing etc.

TLDR whats the best way of arranging this object so it can be used in Unreal? seems like  the way I did it is waste of time.

TheGabmeister

Merge the meshes into one single piece before export. Makes it easier to handle when in UE4. You can create a second UV map for lightmapping, or have UE4 generate the lightmap UVs for you.

Make sure you have duplicates of the original mesh components so that you can make changes later. This is generally the workflow for objects with a lot of repeating segments.

oraeles77

TheGabmeister said:

Merge the meshes into one single piece before export. Makes it easier to handle when in UE4. You can create a second UV map for lightmapping, or have UE4 generate the lightmap UVs for you.

Make sure you have duplicates of the original mesh components so that you can make changes later. This is generally the workflow for objects with a lot of repeating segments.

in Unity (been a few years since I used it though) there was a feature where you could combine several objects then have an icon representing that collection of items, which you could drag into the scene at anytime, instancing? I cant remember what it was called, but I used it a few times.

TheGabmeister

You mean creating a Prefab in Unity?

In UE4, the equivalent is creating a Blueprint. This might be what you need; however, you will still encounter the issue of applying a material to each component.

oraeles77

TheGabmeister said:

You mean creating a Prefab in Unity?

In UE4, the equivalent is creating a Blueprint. This might be what you need; however, you will still encounter the issue of applying a material to each component.

ahh ok, cool, I will experiment with the blueprint thing.

oraeles77

TheGabmeister said:

Merge the meshes into one single piece before export. Makes it easier to handle when in UE4. You can create a second UV map for lightmapping, or have UE4 generate the lightmap UVs for you.

Make sure you have duplicates of the original mesh components so that you can make changes later. This is generally the workflow for objects with a lot of repeating segments.

the reason why I'm trying to avoid merging everything together is cause I was experiemnting with splines in Blnder and Im trying to avoid the concrete parts getting deformed when doing spines.

Pirog

Hold on with merging in Blender into one single object or making blueprint with child components as static meshes (parts).
There's an option to import ANY model file as a single model in Unreal Engine 4. At the import step, select "Combine Meshes" option to unify all subobjects from the file into one model.
This way you could still have multiple objects in Blender and in FBX file, but at the engine it will be unified into one single mesh.

Note: to have multiple material IDs on subobjects inside UE4, you have to apply some kind of multimaterial with different IDs in Blender and properly define material IDs before exporting into engine. Without this you would only have one single material ID for the whole object.
 

oraeles77

Pirog said:

Hold on with merging in Blender into one single object or making blueprint with child components as static meshes (parts).
There's an option to import ANY model file as a single model in Unreal Engine 4. At the import step, select "Combine Meshes" option to unify all subobjects from the file into one model.
This way you could still have multiple objects in Blender and in FBX file, but at the engine it will be unified into one single mesh.

Note: to have multiple material IDs on subobjects inside UE4, you have to apply some kind of multimaterial with different IDs in Blender and properly define material IDs before exporting into engine. Without this you would only have one single material ID for the whole object.
 

yeah, i already had an idea what that option would do, however it would be counter productive for my workflow. thanks.