File sharing

Development Asset Creation
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What is the best way to share ‘.uassets’ with different projects?

  1. Can we have a UE project in source controls that contains all assets for all projects? Can we just drag the .uasset into a new project?

  2. Do we have to ‘Migrate’ the .uasset from the source project into a new project?

  3. Can we package up a .uasset with dependencies and archive them (zip them up)?

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Hi Sean2Dmonkey,

  1. Yes you can - dragging assets sometimes works, but you have to know every asset referenced by it - very easy to make mistakes.
  2. Migrating is the recommended way to do it
  3. Not that I’m aware of in the current code - it would be quite easy to write a c++ plugin to do this, but probably not worth it.

Check out the collaboration features of 5.0:

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Epic doesn’t recommend moving uassets outside of the editor (via file explorer or any other way that doesn’t handles the references and dependencies). As @RecourseDesign said: Migrating is the way to do it.

You can definitely hold your assets in a project that’s in source control. But I couldn’t see the motivation behind it. Esspecially while you can store any source file type in a Perforce server.

For your third question I don’t recommend it. Might corrupt your files since each uasset dependencies/references holds paths rooted from the projects location… If you create a plugin that handles the dependencies and references as @RecourseDesign said it would work. But It would take too much and probably won’t worth the effort and time.

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Thank you ‘ReasourceDesign’ and ‘ilbeyataberkcan.’ May I ask another question?

Would the project in Perforce be the source library (so to speak)? Then you would use ‘Migrate’ to send the assets from the library to other projects that would need the art?

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Yes it’s technically possible if your target project is compatible. It usually is if you’re not migrating it to an older version (But it might work with older versions too. I didn’t try it.).

But again you can just hold and version your art assets in Perfore from the beginning of their development/design. This way you would have the uncompressed project file of those art assets.

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Thank you

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This brings me back to a question.
The source assets like Maya files, Substance files and textures outputs can be stored in Perforce.

But what about the Unreal Assets that have already been processed in Engine with materials (materials node tweeks)?

Can I archive the ‘uasset’ dependencies so I can just import the ‘uasset’ into other Unreal projects so the art does not have to be processed in UE again?

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So, you want to store the .uasset files in Perforce without a Unreal Engine project?

If that is the case, you can. But it, probably, is going to be problematic while you try to import them into projects.

If that’s not the case and you want store an Unreal Engine project as an archive of your uassets. This would be the way to go. If I’m not mistaken; Unreal doesn’t re-process the uassets on migrate. So, you won’t lose quality when migrating.

About the Unreal’s native(generated) files like materials, levels etc. You can also store them in an archive project and migrating would work as expeced. Of course for compatible versions of the engine. You would know if an engine version drops support for older systems or file types since Epic would anounce it on live streams and YouTube videos or Forums.

For short you can migrate almost everything -if not everything- in your content folder.

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Thank you for all your help, ilbeyataberkcan. This helps me.

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I’m happy if I could help you. Wish you a great journey in the industry. :slight_smile: