bug?: datasmith materials from C4D do not import as "masked" Blend mode (in override properties) when alpha map is used

Development Pipeline & Plugins Plugins
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1

I have a large scene with 100s of materials imported via Datasmith from Cinema4D. Many of the materials have alpha channel maps, which are loaded into the material correctly, but the thing that is not correct is that the Material Property Overrrides for the Blend Mode is still set to “Opaque”, rather than “Masked”, which is required for it to work. Now I have all these materials that need to be adjusted manually (why is there no way to bulk edit via matrix for materials?)… is it a bug that Datasmith doesn’t import with the correct Blend Mode?

2

Hello espacedub,

Could you please post an example C4D with one of the materials that doesn’t get imported correctly?

3

Hi AKnauer - here’s a download link to a simple c4d file with a material that has an image in the alpha channel. When imported to UE5 via datasmith, the material that is created has the “C4DReference” material as the parent. the image map is loaded correctly in the alpha map channel, but the material blend mode is set to “opaque”, requiring manual override to a “masked” blend mode, in order for the alpha channel to wok correctly

4

Thank you for the example!
The material import of the C4D Datasmith plugin is still being worked on. Could you try out this beta version? The transparent material instances are set to “Masked”. One plugin is for Unreal 5.0, the other for 5.1. You should also have Cinema 2023.1 or later installed on you machine.
CinewareForUnreal.Win.OSX.SIGNED.UE5.0(ver_0.2023.6)_2023.03.02.zip (2.9 MB)
CinewareForUnreal.Win.OSX.SIGNED.UE5.1(ver_0.2023.6)_2023.03.02.zip (2.9 MB)

If you have any issues, please feel free to message me.

5

Hi - thanks for the file! yes, now it does seem to work correctly with the same material I tested before.

6

Hi! I’m working on quite a big scene atm and I’m facing the same issue. As I manually updated most of the materials in the project, do you think I can “update” the C4DReference material to fix the rest of the material instances?

Like the transparent materials, it’s seems to have an issue with the emissive ones, the glow strength value don’t affect the actual light over 1

Other question, where can I download the latest beta version of Cineware? GitHub?