DataSmith - Sketchup and Material Instances

[anonymous_user_cba8c947]

Hi

Im using DataSmith to import Sketchup geomoetry, however the materials are coming in as instances. Is there any way of making them regular materials? Either in EU4 or something in Sketchup?

Thanks

[kenpimentel]

You want them as instances generally. That eliminates the build time for non-instanced materials.

[Twanvandijk]

Hi there, excuse me for kind of hijacking the post, but i think TS wants to be able to edit his imported materials via nodes in UE4. I say this because i am experiencing the same problem. Importing everything from sketchup to ue4 isn’t a problem, but then editing the materials is. I’ve been searching for a solution for some time now.

If someone could help is would be really happy

regards Twan

[Ro-Su]

All the materials we import from SketchUp are instances of a master Material that you’ll find in the Datasmith Content plugin. We created this master material to carry over all the material properties we can read from SketchUp, and interpret them to work with UE4. Using Material Instances is good, as Ken says above, because it avoids spending time recompiling the shader every time you want to modify a property. If you want to modify the node graph of the master material, you can do that too. You just have to create a copy of the master Material we supply, and set the Material Instance created by the Datasmith importer to point to your copy as its master.

[Ro-Su]

Step by step:

1. Double-click the Material Instance you want to modify to open it in the Material Instance Editor.
2. Click the Hierarchy button in the Toolbar, then choose SketchUpMaster > Open In Editor from the contextual menu. You’ll see the graph for the master material open up in the Material Editor.
3. From the main menu, select File > Save As, and save the master Material to a new Asset in your Project.
4. Go back to your Material Instance, and find the General > Parent setting in the **Details **panel. Set this reference to point to your new master Material.

Now, when you modify the graph for your master Material, those changes will affect the instance.

Hope that helps.

[Twanvandijk]

Thanks for the explanation Ro-Su-!!

I guess i still have a lot of figuring out to do. I thought i could just add a bumpmap to a imported sketchup material like that, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. Thanks for your help so far!

[pf_breton (Pierre-Felix Breton)]

@Twanvandijk

Thanks for the explanation Ro-Su-!!

I guess i still have a lot of figuring out to do. I thought i could just add a bumpmap to a imported sketchup material like that, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. Thanks for your help so far!

This makes me think that we should probably consider adding extra slots to the material for bump in the “UE Extended” section

[DEBCal]

So this UnReal methodology is nice but also not nice.
As a noob, I appreciate that this SketchUp/Datasmith/UnReal methodology simplified my workflow and time required to achieve a final output. However, I’m busy with some UnReal Online Learning Courses which refers to and uses the Graph Panel in the Material Editor. I would like to upskill myself by getting into more of the detail and power of UE. The instructor in this paricular course uses 3D Max/Datasmith/UnReal workflow and (ostensibly) has the Graph Panel available as soon as he opens the Material Editor. Like the noob that I am I was clicking around trying to find a toolbar menu whereby I can activate the Graph Panel on my side. If I hadn’t come across this thread regarding the SketchUp/Datasmith/UnReal workflow I would still be searching online and randomly clicking everywhere.
The solution offered above of creating a New SketchUpMaster could work (I presume - I couldn’t find the copy I saved when re-directing the Parent material).
The second option, of course, is to simply create each of the SketchUp materials afresh inside UnReal. Quite a pain if one has many materials.
So why is that the 3d Max/Datasmith/UE automatically allows each material to be independently modified but the SketchUp workflow doesn’t?

[anonymous_user_255bfc84]

@Ro-Su

Step by step:

1. Double-click the Material Instance you want to modify to open it in the Material Instance Editor.
2. Click the Hierarchy button in the Toolbar, then choose SketchUpMaster > Open In Editor from the contextual menu. You’ll see the graph for the master material open up in the Material Editor.
3. From the main menu, select File > Save As, and save the master Material to a new Asset in your Project.
4. Go back to your Material Instance, and find the General > Parent setting in the **Details **panel. Set this reference to point to your new master Material.

Now, when you modify the graph for your master Material, those changes will affect the instance.

Hope that helps.

Thank You… This should help. But it looks more like a work around.

I’m really surprised that not many people have asked this question before. This was the only article where I found this information - by which time I had messed up my parent SketchupMaster material

I hope the below link also helos **SunTin15 **and Twanvandijk

SketchUp Pro