Importing Plane from 3dsmax as a static mesh

Development Asset Creation
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So I’m having issues importing a Static Mesh I made in 3ds … It’s a plane with a texture I made and I want to use this as my background…
I’m probably doing it the incorrect way… I went through the Tappy Chicken files and to me it looks like all of the images were made on a flat plane with a texture and imported as a .fbx file.

The plane imports but there is no texture. I applied the texture in 3ds but once I import it into Unreal 4 as a Static Mesh everything goes downhill from there.

Is this the wrong process? There really isn’t any tutorials on making a 2D game so I’ve been trying to break down Tappy Chicken to get a start somewhere.

Anyone also have an idea how to make Sprite sheets… I’ve got a character to move around using flipbooks but I noticed in tappy chicken there is a sprite sheet Texture2D. Actually everything is set as sprite sheets…

If anyone has some help please fill me in… I think im heading the wrong direction when trying to make a 2D game or even importing graphic’s

  • Edit
    Even when I import a model with a texture it imports it into U4E without any textures…
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in the fbx export did u select embed media, did u make sure to export binary 2013 and not 2014. Also did u check the import material and textures box in the import prompt

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Just import the texture separately and then create a material out of it -> right click onto the texture - create new material

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Thanks Shoiko… That worked I’m pretty pumped now that I have my first static mesh.

I was going through the tappy birds demo reel and noticed that their character animation’s are located in one file as a Sprite sheet… Does anyone have any leads on how to do this? Im sure there is some programing in it. Also all of their materials are within one file and its as if Unreal seperates them individually. Is this done by making a plane and loading all the graphics into it and then programing within Unreal?

The animated bird is not done through flipbook the route I was going, its a sprite sheet with 4 separate animation’s. Same with every other material within the game is all one one material then separated into separate sprites.

Any lead’s would be awesome feel free to share hah…

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Hey Shokio… I just tested it by adding it to my scene and whats happening now is the texture doesn’t show up in the scene but in my content browser and all other windows it looks fine.

Edit…
So I moved the lighting and the texture is there, is there options in 3ds that I should be looking at to bypass any lighting situation within Unreal4?

Edit… I tried to adjust stuff in 3dsmax within the material editor and still unable to figure it out, also adjusted the Transmittance and that didn’t work at all.

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Hi, Tappy Chicken does not use lighting. I just made the material unlit. You can change this in the material, set the lighting mode to Unlit, and run your diffuse into the emissive channel. The Chicken animation is done by offsetting the UV’s in the material. If you open the chicken material you can see how this works. You basically just tell the material how many rows there are in the texture, and then just feed it what frame number you want. I do this with a timeline. You can find it on the lower left of the Blueprint. Also, if you doing an unlit game, go to Edit/Project Setting/ Rendering and uncheck Mobile HDR. This will turn off lighting all together, and will give better performance on low end devices.

I hope this helps,

Shane

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From what I’m seeing on my side I have to adjust all my materials when bringing them into unreal. Plus depending on your needs lighting isnt needed (What he said^)

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Thanks for the info shane and shoiko it’s helped alot. I think I’m going to have to learn some code and or terminology before starting to use the blueprints… it isn’t as easy as it looks. As simple as making an actor and having the camera follow it is pretty hard for someone who hasn’t done any of this before.

Shane, is this Parallax Scrolling happening in Tappy Chicken?

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Even when looking at the material I don’t get it how it’s done. I can’t seem to find where the you define the UV coordinates the material loops through. I do indeed see the frame count but again I don’t see anything related to the coordinates. I would really appreciate it if you could give some more information on this Shane.

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I found out yesterday that if you want to do this really fast you can just place your mesh in the scene and then drag a texture from the content browser onto the mesh and it will auto create a material and apply it for you.