Datasmith Feature Requests

[maxbrown]

@pf_breton

The next version of the plugin will most likely improve on that. There are however details in how Sketchup stores data that we also respect that can change things a bit.
In the above model, I have 2 components and 2 groups. In Unreal, the actor names will respect what has been set in the Sketchup outliner. Note that a user can customize names in Sketchup that don’t get stored are the Group/Component definition level so we are taking account of that.
For components, they will point to the same meshes instances so we have one asset for many actors: the asset will use the component definition name, while the actor will use the outliner name.

My guess would be; if the modeller in SketchUp takes the effort to name an object (even if the component already has a name) - he/she must have a reason for that and it would be nice if the name would persist into US.

@pf_breton

That is by design. When several separate connected meshes sit inside the same level in the hierarchy, we preserve their separation. Grouping all faces as one mesh will create other issues, like gigantic lightmap uvs, improper culling etc. When working with unreal, we have to unlearn old habits from other renderers (like combining meshes by material or by layer) : this works against you in a realtime engine like Unreal.
The real issue is “too many actors from sketchup” in general.

In principal I agree or the next thing people will complain about is the slow performance of US.
But maybe there could be a threshold before an object gets split up into multiple parts? No need to split up objects if the total face count of the group doesn’t exceed 200 faces or so(or give people a way to control this setting)? For people who create clean and low poly models (the best way to keep SketchUp fast and responsive) this would be nice.

@pf_breton

In the future we will provide tools to regroup objects in a more smarter way to reduce drawcalls while respecting instancing. We have a prototype of that done in python that achieves this, I have attached it if you want to pay with it (no promises made to its usefulness). The downside of that method is that it will break re-import so we are thinking of a way to do it as a pre-import step.

...

Interesting code. I will have a look at it once I figure out how to run Python in UE 4.20. Last time I looked I couln’t find any official documentation.

Breaking re-import could be bad once you start to add interaction to your objects in the scene (a rotating door for instance) ?

Kind regards,