This 3-part video series demonstrates the process for organizing newly imported textures and geometry, creating a dedicated material instance, connecting the parent material and texture parameter data, and assigning to the new static mesh.
https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/xrnE/unreal-engine-asset-setup-with-the-unreal-python-api
Wonderful set of tutorials! Just what I needed. Just one thing remains; How to apply the material change(s) to a StaticMeshActor , i.e. to a static mesh already placed in a scene?
Hey there @tom_fielden sorry for the delay. You can modify material assignments on a static mesh actor by accessing the static mesh component. The static mesh component inherits a method called set_material. Check out the documentation here to learn more: unreal.PrimitiveComponent — Unreal Python 5.1 (Experimental) documentation