Hello,
I’ve built a functional Datasmith exporter plugin for Autodesk Maya, and I’d like to understand what options I have for selling it commercially, as well as whether there’s any interest on Epic’s side in collaborating on it.
Epic provides official Datasmith exporters for 3ds Max, Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, Archicad and others, but Maya has no supported path into Twinmotion beyond FBX export, which is impractical for large scenes. In my own production work, exporting FBX from scenes with over 12,000 meshes took 15-20 minutes per iteration.
The plugin I developed uses the Datasmith SDK to sync Maya scenes to Twinmotion over Direct Link. It handles scene hierarchy, transforms, normals, UVs, materials and textures, multi-material meshes, and incremental sync with a persistent cache. In practice it brought that 15-20 minute cycle down to roughly 20 seconds.
My questions are specifically about commercial distribution:
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May I sell this plugin as a paid commercial product, given that it redistributes DatasmithSDK.dll? My reading of the Unreal Engine EULA is that this binary qualifies as “Engine Tools” because it incorporates modules from the Engine\Source\Developer folder, which would limit distribution to Epic-approved channels. I’d like to confirm whether that reading is correct.
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If paid distribution is permitted, which channel would be appropriate? Fab appears oriented toward engine assets and plugins rather than plugins for third-party DCC applications, so I’m unsure whether it applies to a Maya plugin.
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Are there royalty or revenue-share obligations I should be aware of for a product of this type?
Separately from the licensing question, I’d be glad to discuss whether Epic has any interest in this filling a gap in the Datasmith ecosystem, in whatever form makes sense.
Happy to provide more detail or a demonstration if useful.
Best regards,
Daniel Delgado