right, so, i’ve got what seems to be a very basic problem, i understand what causes it for the most part, but not any solutions. i’ve been trying for at least a week now, to try and find a way to import an FBX version of a gmod map into Unreal. everything has been solved all the way up to the point that i’m having the problem with materials. when i import the FBX file, after it’s all imported, i get a large list of mundane errors, and then the actual problem all the way down at the bottom. the model has 122 materials, and the maximum is 64. i’ve been stuck at this stage now for at least two days trying to find any way to work around this issue, lower material ammount, find a way to collaborate all of the materials into one, or just a few, finding a way to split the model into a few different ones, but i just can’t find out how to do it. and so the question comes, can i get some help finding a way around this? if not, is it possible to increase the max ammount of mat IDs, and if so, how?
another thing i should note, i doubt this will have any baring on what’s causing the problem, but i’m using the Ark: Survival Evolved Dev kit
see i understand that i need to break up the mesh, but there are two things i need to know… firstly is, how to even do that. and secondly just, if i did that, when i re-imported the new fbx models into UE4, would the textures still be mapped to them?
also i should note, i’ve used blender, and i couldn’t figure out how to do it, but even though i wasn’t able to, when i re-exported the fbx and imported into UE4, the textures were gone. hence why i still have a problem.
The actual process of break up a mesh, depends of which 3d modeling software you use. Since you are asking how, I can only assume you don’t know how to use any modeling software, my suggestion to learn would be blender, it’s free with a large community.
Also, yes assuming you don’t change anything about the materials of the mesh, exporting the FBX file(s) should retain the required textures. This really shouldn’t be a problem if you have the source textures outside of the FBX file.
Honestly, If you are simply trying to bring in an entire level as single static mesh, you’re just plain old doing things wrong.
My advice would be to import the FBX in to maya or 3DS Max or even blender and break the level up into smaller chunks.
like i said before, i did use blender, and when exported, the materials were not there. in fact, it seemed, everywhere i looked about this, it was impossible for blender to do it at all. and so, learning blender (or rather, how specifically to do this one thing, since i know blender for the most part, just not how to do this one particular thing) is out of the question.
I don’t personally use Maya or 3DS Max but I’m pretty sure they can do this with no problem.
However I assume you don’t have the textures outside of the FBX, which is a problem.
Either way when you import an FBX into blender it maintain materials. One thing you can do is once the level is import in to blender. select it and enter edit mode, press a to select all faces and the press p and choose by material to separate the Model in separate object by materials you can then export the whole thing as an fbx and import into UE4 make sure combine meshes is not checked and you should import each part of the map as a sperate piece by material.
Your only option from there is to recreate the materials you need.
It’s alot of hard work but that’s what it take to do anything.
i’m sorry. i should’ve clarified. there is only two things i need solved, everything else i already understand. all i need to know is how to seperate the mesh into different meshes, which i will be able to find out elsewhere, along with the texture exporting. what i need to know in relativity to unreal is if it’s possible to change the max ammount of materials allowed in one object, and how, and the inbetween areas, between whatever software i choose, and unreal, if when i split the objects i can put them back together and have the materials already be there just as they are already in the original full map FBX. i have all of the textures of the entire map in the FBX, in the original VTF format, in both PNG and BMP format, and all at once imported into unreal, and do not have a need to care about optimization, or lag, or wait times, when putting everything in.