How to get sub-meshes in imported mesh?

Hi everyone,

I am in the process of learning UE4 and come from a Unity background. I have a question about importing “sub-meshes” in a model. In Unity, when you import a model, you get a full hierarchy of meshes with their own transforms. I downloaded a tank model and this is what I see in Unity:

Screen Shot 2016-08-08 at 7.06.10 PM.png

My question is, how do I get access to the components you see in the screenshot in UE4? In UE4 I simply get the tank as a whole object and I can’t seem to get access to the meshes inside. I want to access the gun and turret sub-meshes to control the tank. I can easily do this in Unity by independently rotating the meshes.

Am I missing something here in UE4? Do I need to set some options while importing? I know there is a socket system, but this would require the turret, body, tracks, and gun as separate FBX objects. Hence, every FBX model has to be specially prepared for UE4? :confused:

The tank model i used can be found here: [)

Thanks for your help.

UE4 does not work that way, when you import a file that is made of more than one object you have the option to either combine them all into a single mesh or have them each separated out into their own mesh. Once you have it imported into the Content Browser you can than place them into the scene and organize them into folders, or you can use Blueprints to combine meshes.

Ah, I seemed to have not noticed a ‘combine meshes’ option in the import dialog.

Thank you, I got all the meshes as separate objects and now I can combine as I see fit in blueprints. :slight_smile:

I’d like to say this option was called something different when I imported a Skeletal Mesh in UE4.27. It was a tic box called “Import Meshes in Bone Hierarchy”