While datasmith is awesome in almost every aspect, it really drives me crazy how it handles a reimport. I am exporting from Cinema 4D, using the suggested workflow from the documentation. However, I’m not saving the whole scene but only selected elements as a new C4D file to reimport into UE4.
Now, my datasmith scene asset does recognise the updated file and reimports the meshes correctly, BUT: all my overrides are killed (actor mobility, materials). Since there’s a lot of actors in each datasmith scene, this issue causes hours of additional work.
Hello @acorma , sorry I was away on holidays. If you’re still struggling, I found the following solution:
Instead of creating one Cinema Scene only and exporting selected elements as separate C4D files, I chose an inverted approach: For each assembly that I want to import into UE, i create a single C4D scene and save it (keep in mind to activate “save polygon cache” under the Cineware tab in the project settings). To keep track of the overall scene i then import all sub-assemblies aka C4D files via X-Ref into a master-file.
That way, each time I update a sub-assembly and re-save it, it doesn’t create a “new” cinema file but rather updates it, which in turn is correctly read by the datasmith importer and all changes made in the UE editor will still be there.
I hope this is coherent and will also solve your problem.
Thanks for the solution. It does seem to partially work. The position/rotation info seems to remain but the materials still seem to get reset. I have tried it in UE5 and the reimport seems to work ok there. I will use your solution for now and will just have to replace the materials each time I reimport.
Thanks again for the solution and for taking the time to reply.
I’m having the same issue with 5.0.3 and it’s very frustrating as I’m trying to build my scene in C4D and UE in parallel has there been any definite solution for this, especially the materials overrides?