Hey there,
I´m working on animation for TV and we recently switched to Unreal for most of it.
For a while now I´ve been experimenting with a few variations to streamline our workflow and now I have a bit of time and wanna tackle this again.
We have some assets we keep reusing, that should always update to future projects using it, but should still be editable on a per project basis.
For example: A human anatomy model with different layers:
Skeleton/Muscles/Organs/Nerves etc.
Right now, how we do it is:
- We import the actors from 3ds max, either as skeletal meshes (all using the same skeleton) or as datasmith actors (so we can keep the original pivots while having all actors in the correct spot).
- We use a Main permanent level and add all layers to separate sublevels, that we then load into the permanent level.
- For every new project that uses this asset, we make a duplicate of the main level, that is referencing the same sublevels.
So far so good, with this workflow we can also easily render out several renderpasses using a simple master sequence with some level visibity tracks.
Where it gets messy: If we need to make changes to the assets or just parts of the assets, we only need in ONE project, we can either duplicate all sublevels and pull them into a new main level and edit those (which is unecessary extra work and makes it harder to track changes we might want to backfit into the original sublevels) OR we can
make this changes ONLY in the sequencer: We add the actors from that sublevel to the sequencer and then we can override materials or transforms, without affecting the original Level.
Its working ok this way, but its a bit tedious when having to change a lot of actors this way and its also a bit dangerous, because even though we already have permissions in place, it can still happen that someone accidentally changes something in the sublevels instead of just in the sequencer and now it would persist into all referenced instances of those.
Also, we can´t have some stuff automated easily, like creation of renderpasses/mass overrides etc.
So I´ve been looking into Packed level Blueprints and have some questions.
Bare with me, as I might not use all the right terms, haven´t done much with blueprints yet…
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Are these Packed Level blueprints really the best way to go about this? For example, I´ve mostly read about using them for static meshes/instanced meshes, not for skeletal meshes. And performance isn´t a concern for us, as we just render it out via MRQ for tv.
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What would I need to do in order to be able to drag the original BPP into a new level and then being able to choose to either edit it in place AND persist these changes to ALL instances in this level OR all references to it in other levels…OR be able to make edits to its actors that ONLY would persist in the current level?
Would this even be possible with packed level blueprints or would this also only be able through sequencer? In that case, looking into blutilities for masss material switching or setting up renderpasses might be simpler and we´d just stay with the sublevel approach.
I have been looking into wether it might be possible to spawn sublevels via sequencer, but didn´t find anything, that might also be an alternative then. -
How would I be able to access specific actors in the blueprint in sequencer?
Could I add a skeletal mesh from the blueprint to the sequencer and assign a custom animation or animate blendshapes with a blueprint animation class for example? -
I´ve only tried it on a level consisting of several datasmith spawned actors and when added the blueprint to the sequencer, I was only able to select the instanced hierarchical meshes in sequencer, NOT the single instances used it it.
But if I chose “edit” in he bluprint details panel, I could select and manipulate single actors.
Which I assume would also edit the corresponding level instance the packed level blueprint was based on and thus make it impossible to make changes to single instances that were ONLY persisting in the main level the BPP was used in. -
Can you sort actors into layers or sublevels in a BPP, so you could change their “hidden in game” visibility at once for setting up render passes?
Hope someone can answer some of these questions, while I look into these myself…