3ds max to UE4 - beginner questions about best workflow

[Tiazz]

Hello Everyone!
I’m very new to UE4, I’ve just followed the awesome tutorial by Chris Jennings “Creating an Interior Walkthrough in Unreal Engine and 3ds Max”, but now i need some tips from you

For example, yesterday I modeled some pieces to build a depot/hangar/warehouse (I don’t know the correct name in English).
This scene is composed by many modular meshes.
Here my doubts:

1: It’s better to import the basic meshes in UE, set their material and then build the model in unreal duplicating and snapping those meshes, or importing the entire warehouse from 3ds max, or maybe… something else?

2: Groups: in 3ds max I use a lot groups, but when I import them in 3ds amx, they are obviusly just meshes… which is the best workflow? Group them in UE4?

3: I just unwrapped everything, to be in space UV1 in Channel1… it’s ok some think like this?

By the way, I just ask you how do you guys would approch properly that kind of level design, to work without wasting time and in a clean way.

Hope this thread will be useful also to someone else!

[Tiazz]

@darthviper107

In the meantime before you get access to Datasmith you can try the FBX Scene Import option:
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest…ene/index.html

You can arrange your meshes in 3ds Max and export it all into one file (make sure you use instances and the instances are enabled in the FBX export options)
When you use this option it will import one of the instances and gives you the option to create a Blueprint that contains the positions of all the objects in the scene so it can place your walls and such and they’ll maintain the instancing. So it’s a bit similar to Datasmith but not as fully featured or as simple but it’s an option.
Be aware that things like walls will have issues with lighting if you build them out of multiple objects, the way that lighting works in UE4 each object gets processed individually when you build lighting and that creates slight variations in the indirect lighting since it doesn’t share the information between objects. For modular stuff this ends up where you can see the separate objects. The best solution is to make complete sections like a full wall as one mesh or you need to hide the seams with an object or something like that.

Thank you for the tip!
Yesterday I finally found time to try this, tried with separate pieces and luckily it looks ok, i’ve tried the FBX Scene Import (it looks very useful) but I had some problems with meshes in different location compared to 3ds Max (probably some pivot/trasformation of objects were weird), but with the standard import everything was okay.
Next time i want to try what you say, build a complete wall piece all in a mesh with different ID!
Here the first result, I’ve already learn ed a lot of things. Thank you!