Hi all,
I remember seeing sometime ago a way you can ‘copy’ some placeholder objects (can’t remember if they were to be meshes or helpers) in 3ds Max, then go into UE4 and paste them. Then selecting those objects in UE4 and replacing with an object. Any help?
Cheers,
If you want to set up your level in 3ds Max you can use FBX Scene Import: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/FBX/FullScene/index.html
It will maintain your object positions and instances
Sorry that’s not what I meant, I know how to import with FBX.
I have for example 10 nodes/either helpers or meshes in 3ds Max, I want to import to UE4 and then replace them with trees or another object in UE4. If I import the 10 objects as a mesh they just come in as one combined mesh, not 10 separate ones. I do remember a ‘copy and paste’ workflow for these sort of nodes from 3ds Max. It was so simple, now I can’t seem to replicate it and I can’t find anything when I search for such a thing.
That scene import feature will import them as separate objects, you can always replace the object in the actor with something else.
I created a script for 3ds Max that essentially copies the position/rotation of an object from 3ds Max and then translates it to the UE4 text format you can paste into UE4, it’s the same thing though as the Scene Import, you would have to replace whatever object in the actor that you want to have there:
oh ok, thanks, I’ll give that a try
I’m very new to UE4 and am trying to do something similar. I tried using the TS Tools script first before finding the import scene option. It seems to do what I need from some initial small tests. But I am trying to optimize it for placing thousands of identical items in one scene. I have a revit model with stadium seats that I am trying to import. Even though each seat is the same family, UE4 imports each one as its own object. I can select them all at once and replace them with one seat, but that is getting far to cumbersome with thousands of objects at once. Is there a better way to import so that the objects are not unique? Right now I am trying to create a dumbed down model where each seat is a single rectangular plane to be swapped out in UE4 for the actual seat model. Even this is taking over an hour to import.
Is it importing a unique object for each chair into the Content Browser in UE4? If you have instances in 3ds Max then it should only import one of them into UE4.
In any case–I’ve done stadiums before, and you shouldn’t do separate chairs, in a game there’s an issue with Draw Calls, each mesh gets a draw call for the mesh, each material it uses, and for lighting. So the more objects you have the more draw calls you get and performance drops drastically. Draw calls and memory usage are the biggest performance issues in games so reducing those will help.
What you would need to do is first reduce the geometry of the chairs to the lowest possible, and then you need to attach groups of chairs together, it’ll use a bit more memory but will cut down on draw calls which will be the bigger performance concern.
For best performance, you would set up a Blueprint to place the meshes and that would allow you to use Instanced Static Meshes in UE4, but since you have so many objects you don’t want to go through placing them all again in UE4, since that’s what the scene export feature is for.
Yes, each chair is coming in as a unique object. I am guessing I am missing something between exports. I am not really familiar with 3DS, I currently do all of my modelling in Rhino and Revit and sometimes sketchUp. DXF file type seems to keep instance information between those programs (Block instances in Rhino, Components in SketchUp, and Families in Revit) but maybe Max is handling it differently.
I have reduced my individual seat model to just a few planes, about 14 triangles of mesh. With a decent texture I can make look how I want, so that is already helping. Now I am just having difficulty grouping them, there are to many unique exceptions that throw things off. I tried doing one bay grouped at a time, but that still seems to complicated. I am currently importing one bay at a time as a scene import. It is bringing in a unique object for each seat but is not impacting me to bad, yet… I also plan to attempt to swap all of those static meshes out for the same model within the scene editor.
I’ve been looking in to instanced static meshes as well. It seems to be promising, but like you said, placement is nearly impossible. I am totally new to blueprints and have no idea where to even start, but if somehow I could import lines, then use the blueprint to place seats on those, that would be ideal. Or is there a way to import a group of seats that are all unique and just swap them for an instanced mesh?
In 3ds Max if an object is instanced then the title of Editable Poly in the modifier panel for that object will be Bold, so any changes you make to one instance will be done to all of the others. In the FBX exporter, make sure Keep Instances is checked. I haven’t tested the Import Scene feature, so it’s possible it doesn’t actually work this way, but I’m assuming it does since that seems like the purpose of the feature.
If you’re having trouble combining chairs, make sure the section of chairs is not instanced (you can select them all and right-click and click Convert To>Editable Poly and that will collapse the modifier stack on the selection and make them all unique. Then just select on of the chairs and use Attach under Editable Poly and click the other chairs and it will make them one object. I would do it by section so maybe you have like 20 sections of chairs which should reduce the number of draw calls drastically.