As UE4 continues to add new features with its rapid develop I and other architects/designers would like to voice our vote .skp (sketchup) file support as it’s the preferred architectural designer 3D program because of its tools for creating accurate models.
Not sure how hard it would be for UE4 to implement this feature but it would open a large door for users to use the already massive sketchup warehouse library.
I’ve tried using the fbx exporter to import into UE4 but I run into issues with the whole scene being combined into one element and not the separate groups they were in sketchup.
I hope other members of the sketchup/ue4 community help me with pushing for this file support.
Hi Anthony - thanks for trying out the FBX export option! If you un-check the “Combine Meshes” option in the import dialog for your exported FBX, you will notice it imports the FBX mesh nodes as separate assets which you can place in the world, rather than combining them all into a single mesh:
If this works as you expect, there might not be any need for a separate import path for skp.
I’ve tried this myself, and provided you parent groups inside components, they should be imported separately.
Regarding material assignment, I think if you assign multiple unique textures in SketchUp, you should be assign different materials to the faces you assigned different unique textures to. I’m not experienced with SketchUp though, but it’s worth a shot.
I also see Sketchup as not only a great tool for architects and designers but also for game level developers, just look at this youtube video for uncharted 2 and how the developers used Sketchup for the game Designing Uncharted 2 with SketchUp - YouTube
If UE4 supported .skp files then developers could use the free version of sketchup to design in, instead of paying for the pro version need for its .fbx export feature.
I do really hope the team at Epic does’t miss out on supporting .skp files in UE4 as it brings so much potential for game designing.
This method certainly did work for me thank you, it did bring my 3 test box meshes in separately as I grouped them in a single component as you pointed out.
The ultimate goal I’m wanting to achieve with Sketchup and UE4 is to design my architectural houses in Sketchup with all the models (furniture, accessories etc) and simply import that exact layout I created into UE4 so that I can then start adding UE4’s materials to specific mesh surfaces (couch, wooden floors, etc) and also edit those meshes easily still in UE4.
Design/model in Sketchup and harness the power of UE4’s rendering and materials.
I do beg for .skp file support which would make the transition between the two programs simple.
Hey, sorry, I’ve been away from the internet for a few days!
Just to clarify, you have models importing as separate meshes now, which is great. What you are wanting is to be able to assign specific materials to arbitrary surfaces, essentially allowing you to texture a model that is untextured in sketchup?
If this is what you’re after, I’m not sure that adding an SKP import option would even help you, as it will still have to translate to UE4s mesh format which works on set material assignments for groups of mesh faces (usually referred to as mesh batches). You can see these elements in the static mesh editor when opening an imported FBX, and these are editable per instance when placed in a world.
If you want a finer grained control than this, I would go for a layered material approach.
Finally, you seem to ask to be able to edit the imported meshes themselves in UE4 - if you mean editing the actual mesh geometry, this is not currently possible, though we are currently discussing the future of the geometry editing tools in UE4 and this might be a direction we take.
I’ve opened a dialogue internally about sketch up - I’ll let you know where it goes!
Thank you for getting back to me with this conversation.
As I mentioned before, I’m hoping to design my architectural models in Sketchup (like a few other memebers I’ve seen on the forums) as it is accurate with measurements need for true scale enviroments and also super easy tools to use for building gaming levels.
Hi again!
I’m a little confused as to what is left unresolved here - as far as I can see you want the ability to assign materials to specific faces in UE4, and to be able to edit mesh geometry.
As I stated earlier, assigning meshes to specific faces isn’t something that is a sensible workflow (performance wise, among others). We’re looking to vastly overhaul our geometry (BSP) editing tools, which may encompass a sketchup-style workflow but this is still quite a way off, and is still in discussion.
I’m not sure what *.skp support will give us over *.fbx?
I’m happy for now with exporting and importing as a FBX mesh then rearranging in UE4 to how it was in the sketchup model.
What I’d like to do is import a sketchup/fbx mesh into UE4 with no materials/textures attached (so it’s a blank mesh) and then use UE4’s material editor to assign the desired textures and ultimately use the substance designer plugin for applying textures.
From the other forum it sounds like I need to make a UV map of every single model in sketchup to then apply materials to it in UE4?
Sorry for being a pain but hopefully how discussion will help others in the same boat.
"I think we need to clarify the difference between geometry (BSP) and meshes in UE4. The following video is applying materials to geometry:
We can support material assignment such as the above video with geometry because it is a procedurally generated model that we build ourselves in the editor. We don’t support this for static mesh instances (such as those imported from external programs). If you want to continue using SketchUp, then you will need to do an amount of texturing in there before importing it into UE4 so we know what different material assignments you are expecting."
I’ve not used substance designer myself, but I imagine that it will allow you to bring in an FBX from sketchup, assign UVs and materials in there, and re-export it?
With geometry I can use UE4’s material editor for them and with mesh’s that are imported (fbx) you need to bring in their own materials from 3rd party 3D programs in order to have materials applied to them?
So in my case I want to make accurate measured architectural homes I would need to use geometries to use the full power of UE4’s materials and lighting.
So the path I need now is to try and have design tools similar to the one’s in sketchup to make designing homes in UE4.
The ‘tap measure tool’ would be the biggest tool need in UE4 to help designers like me make correctly size models for clients.
Would there be any chance of adding these small features into UE4 in later builds? (hopefully not far down the track)
Or back to my original idea of supporting sketchup files so that when imported into UE4 they get converted to geometry which would make life easy cross all different developers using UE4, meaning that you wouldn’t need to copy most of sketchups tools for making levels super easy in UE4 but using sketchups already powerful workflow then converting them to geometry in UE4?
Your inference that you cannot use UE4 materials on imported meshes is not quite true - the imported mesh simply defines how many material assignments there are, and which faces have which material slot assigned.
You can import a mesh into UE4, and override material slots to anything you want, you just can’t do it per-face as you can with geometry. Each polygon in the mesh will still always point to the same material slot.
With this understanding, it’s possible to roughly texture your model in sketchup, and then overwrite material slots on an instance in UE4 with more detailed and beautiful materials. Does that make sense?
So in theory I could with the sketchup model add assigned materials to ALL surfaces so that once imported into UE4 I can then find those assigned materials and override them with UE4’s materials?
If that is the case there are a lot of surfaces in a architectural home that would need temporary materials assigned to those surfaces just to change them over in UE4.
I very much appreciate your time in discussing this method.
That’s exactly right, yes - to paraphrase, you’re simply using sketchup to state how many unique material IDs there are, and where they are assigned.
Using this workflow you have the option of either using sketchup’s materials in UE4 (imported from the FBX), editing and refining the imported materials, or creating all the materials from scratch in UE4 and swapping them out in the material assignments on the mesh.
Hello,
first post
I would also hold my hand up for .skp support (or just a way to get models into UE4 from sketchup). UE4 to me a sketchup user is like looking into the suitcase in pulp fiction. I design Tv Sets and work mainly in the media industry but hang around the with the architects and the rest of the sketchucation.com forums. UE4 would suit tons of people there and would be very popular.
Sketchup is what it is designed to do. Get people into 3d and it gets a bit of a kicking when you compare it to maya, 3DS and Blender from the guys that use these programs. SU is a great program, as its user friendly and a newbie is up and running in minutes as opposed to hours (in my case trying to learn maya - days!)
I realise that its unconventional behaviour isn’t well received here but it is very popular and Epic could do a lot worse than encourage sketchup users.
I’ve read the posts and I can get the model in easy enough but after building the lights all my textures go mental.
Also
Lumion is bloody expensive - and UE4’s new subscription is a god send to the finacially constrained. Financially constrained? go to blender I hear you say…. learn another completely new way of working. it just doesn’t work - its a huge plunge of time and effort - something not many people have.
Thank you for helping me voice this massive opportunity epic has in front of them, I know the sketchup community is just wanting for the flood gates to open and pour in the insanely huge amounts of .skp models from the community and warehouse.
I see two options epic can take with this kind of supporting.
1 - Automatically convert the most popular 3D file formats (skp, 3ds, blend, fbx etc) into UE4’s standard geometry mesh so that it works absolutely fine with UE4.
2 - Support directly those file formats to import in UE4 so those meshs behave as if they were geometry meshs created in UE4 editor.
I deeply hope the Epic team is looking at this kind of fantastic feature.
Help me push this sketchup community and also other 3D users.
