I have a level design which consists of a high amount of simple box shapes. These are just static meshes so there is a need for a collision. The initial solution would be to use the editor to add a collision to it. However that requires me to export each static mesh individually so collisions can be added. That is not much of an issue as I can use a script to do this for me. Now importing these takes about 9 hours while if I import the FBX in once piece it takes less than a minute.
Even if I get through the 9 hours of importing I would still need to manually add collisions to each single static mesh actor.
- I’ve tried the **UCX_ **through 3ds but that didn’t work at all.
- So currently I’m looking into Blocking volume
Could I convert static meshes into block volumes in any way?
When researching online it seem that there was such a function in the older version but I don’t seem to find that any longer.
Export all as a single mesh FBX; add a simple box collision on the Mesh Editor.
And set “Use Complex Collision as Simple” (Static Mesh Setttings -> Collision Complexity).
I mustn’t explained it well. Lets say I have one single level it has 6225 static meshes. To import this alone takes about 9 hours, lets say it takes a minute for each mesh to add a collision to it, it would take me 4 days to get this done. Unless I find a way to automate this somehow. I guess outside UE4. Understand the issue?
If you don’t need to move each box separately or show/hide each one separately; There’s no reason why you can’t export all of them as a single mesh and do what told up there.
If you need to move or show/hide each one separately, you should import only 1 box into the engine and work with actor instances instead.
Importing it all as a single all you have to do is add a simple box collider and set ‘Use Complex as Simple’ and their mesh will be used as colliders instead of the simple box around all of them.
-either add the collision in your 3d program -> normally the UCX_ way should work -> what exactly wasnt working?
-or just add all meshes into 1 single fbx file - export it - import it - in the import settings you have to choose “auto generate collision” + disable “combine meshes” - click on ok 
Where do I disable this “combine meshes” setting. Here is what my importer settings look like to me.
Nevermind ! I had to click on the “down arrow” to expand my settings.
Hummm I don’t understand the approach. As described it sounds like your taking on a rather large work load as a single block rather than building up the environment as part of the iteration process.
A much more pipeline friendly approach is to first establish a asset pipeline, content chain, from 3ds as the host and UE4 as the target.
As a primer 3ds has used a feature it seems forever called x-referencing which is an almost identical pipeline one can established a link to UE4 that makes moving data much easier in smaller chunks.
://knowledge.autodesk/support/3ds-/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-F9CE15BD-FD57-4671-8F3A-8E742B766555-htm.html
The result is the map in UE4 becomes an identical mirror of the same map built entirely inside of 3ds .
By the way use layers, it’s your friend.
With the knowledge of I was able to resolve my issue. Thanks for that btw if you would read this.
Its not really a single object. Its a group of many individual parts. I just had to disable the combine mesh function during the importation. So I work in 3ds on the materials etc than import the fbx within UE4 and that seem to work.
Does the Xref pipeline have any benefits ontop of the FBX pipeline?
Well x-referencing is a means inside of 3ds to manage a large volume of assets, mostly geometry, in smaller chunks to keep the overall workload foot print to a minimum. It’s not part of the FBX pipeline but the same system can be used to reference assets into Unreal 4 using the same pipeline ideology and pathways.
The ideal is to use the same approach as to how to set up for x-referencing but instead of saving to a . file your instead save to a .fbx file.
The benefits are rather dynamic that I would have to write a book as to “possibilities” once you have things broken down into bite sizes but the 20 pound hammer is as many people you can get your hands on can work on the same environment which traditionally was limited to just one person.