I am looking to import fbx static meshes, which would be of engineering designs in order to make walkthroughs/visualisations. The types of projects that would be imported would be things like Train Stations etc.
These would contain a lot of different elements, like bridges, buildings, platforms etc.
Is it better to import the whole site as one mesh or break the meshes down into individual structures?
Thanks
Dave
I have been looking at this problem too.
I try to break up the project into as many pieces as possible. Game engines like UE4 want to make light maps for everything. They also expect simple collision meshes. Neither of these are generated by ACEC apps like Revit or AutoCAD.
What program do you use to generate your FBXs?
A large number of separate objects will slow down performance due to draw calls, so it can help to attach some of them together. You can start with materials, so things that use the same material can be attached to each other. If you have a ton of objects with the same material then you’ll want to split that up a bit.
Lighting is something you’ll want to consider, if you’re doing architectural type stuff then setting up the meshes for lightmaps can be a pain since they’re rarely designed for that. If you want to use baked lighting though, make sure that you don’t have very large objects attached to each other (like large surface area) because then you can’t get as much detail in the lightmaps.
I use Revit and AecoSim mainly.
I did a test on an Aecosim project but it didn’t work too well so I ended up importing that fbx into 3ds max and then exporting it out again from there.
However, I hadn’t played around with the settings too much so I need to go back and look at it again.
I was not aware of Aecosim. Thanks for enlightening me. I use Revit and Civil3D. And like you, I have to go thru 3dsmax to get anything usable into UE4.
Revit uses Autodesk Materials for it’s textures, which don’t work well for 3ds and UE4.
PM me if you want to discuss more.