Datasmith + Vred = Very bad import ?!

Development Pipeline & Plugins
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Hello

I have a CAD data + configuration system, we are working on one of client cars, there is about 90k configurations/renders to produce for it. I’m testing a workflow of doing that in UE.

We have data in VRED.

  1. I’ve grabbed Datasmith Plugin for vred 2024.2
  2. Run - API broken for exporter - open/edit-fix . Got it running
  3. Exported - Imported to Unreal engine Via datasmith plugin.
  4. The grouping of hierarchy has changed, we can see extra nodes like scalingPivot/RotatingPivot I assume this is needed to match the data in VRED and we need those pivots - OK I we live with it…
  5. BUT The names of objects have changed!!!

I have this object in Vred, and we have like 3 duplicates of it.
_67119_K1020_01_01_016501_001046_CONSOLIDATED578

But in the Unreal engine, we have>
Object_67119_K1020_01_01_016501_001046_CONSOLIDATED578_0
Object_67119_K1020_01_01_016501_001046_CONSOLIDATED578_1
Object_67119_K1020_01_01_016501_001046_CONSOLIDATED578_2

Now… I’m quite confused… what the heck is that ? As I can live with Object_XX, I can just check for prefixes and remove them to clean up names, but the suffixes?

What is he doing and why?

We have 60k Objects and very complex config system relaying on names being well what we set them in software A to be the same in software B

Why is datasmith changing the names in such way? How can I disable it?

I also thought of going to static meshes in the Content browser but it’s even worse!

I have >
Object_67119_K1020_01_01_016501_001046_CONSOL_tr
Object_67119_K1020_01_01_016501_001046_CONSOL_tr_ncl1_1

Im royally confused, why are names different to what we have exported ?!?!?!
Its a very very bad system now, how can this be so “mature” yet so inconsistent with original CAD data ?!

I can have duplicate names in editor, nothing explodes, so why is this happening? This is not enterprise grade system at all.

Regards
Dariusz

Edi1 Owh found out the func that was messing up the names, looks like I may be able to fix it in export ;c EVIL STUFF!!!

Edit2 Ok looks like I was able to fix all the renames/etc via editing the export plugin for Vred. Thanks UE team for making it open/easy editable. I did custom prefix_suffix_duplicate logic that still imports that then I can rename again in UE with clean proper names. All seem to “work” yay!

2

Hello Dariusz,
we did not change much in the VRED exporter python script. The last update that you should see in 5.5. is that you now have two versions, the old one and one with some library changes and cleaning because Autodesk changed the Python version they were using and old script was not working anymore. From what you said it is some of the fix you also did on your side.

Since you managed to change the code in UE to have better naming, do you mind sharing the new python file with us so I have a look.
Thanks.