I am trying to hammer down the workflow of using blender with unreal. If I make a simple uv sphere mesh in blender:
And export it as an FBX, and import that into Unreal… it’s all individual faces instead of a solid mesh! I can tell because if I use this material:
And use my imported FBX as the preview model, it looks like this:
(Instead of like when I use the built-in sphere preview model, which correctly just increases the size of the sphere while keeping the faces connected).
Where am I going wrong? Why does pushing the vertices out along the normal result in disjointed faces in my exported fbx?
Ah. A little more investigation was all it took. If you right click in the Blender viewport, there are “shading” options.
These apparently affect the topography of the mesh, and not just the display in the viewport as I had previously assumed. Selecting “Shade Smooth” results in the exported mesh I want.
The mesh is fine and the Shade Smooth option does nothing to the geometry of the mesh. Shade smooth put simply is a lighting trick.
Your issue is with the material (and possibly UV mapping).
Message me if you want to learn about Blender, I teach classes (and am the lead for the official Unreal Engine Hawaii Community).
Good luck~
