If I import .FBX, in Unreal Engine 5, it loses material connections. Any way to fix?
If I import .USD, it has proper material connections, but only 1 mesh merging everything. How to split separate meshes easily?
Automatically made materials are usually bad, and need tweaking.
So watch material tut, create MASTER material for all of your meshes. Then create instanced material for each mesh (and sub-material), and apply correct textures.
This could have changed, but instancing materials was more efficient back in 4.12 era, as Unreal used same shader for each instanced material, and just swapped textures. Which means they all could be rendered in same batch, unlike automatically created materials.
ps.
If you just have few meshes (below 100 or so) just suffer and do it manually.
With bigger numbers i would suggest making either editor tool, or event that is callable in editor.
There you can create instanced material , apply correct textures and apply instanced material to meshes. All is a matter of some naming convention for textures and materials on mesh. Then script can handle the rest.
I import already finished models from fab, sketchfab etc., so they should be ready.
Most models from fab or marketplace are not ready. Esp, materials, they made to look good on pictures, not so much to work good in Unreal. Yes textures are fine, just materials not always (mostly auto generated on import).
You also want single master material for same type of surfaces (like same material for all hard surface meshes like tanks, guns etc)
For eg if you have multiple guns from different packages and want to mix them (ie. kitbash them all together). You want/need single master material and then set correct textures in instanced materials.
Another example:
There is really nice set of packages from single author (i love it) however each package has slightly different master material, when applying same parameters value (like metallic or emmisive) those materials look different. There are some parts like shoes in separate packs, have same textures, but different version of material, and those shoes look different (again because of different material).
How can I split meshes importing .USDx? It has no problem with materials
Make multi-material for mesh, then in unreal you will have multiple slots for materials.
But even if whole mesh has single material and properly made textures, it is beneficial to make master material then instance it and apply correct textures in instanced material. It is easier on shaders.
And for splitting mesh into simple meshes (based on material) you should see: “unreal mutable plugin” search YT you see what can be done with it.
So, I imported .USD file in Blender, deleted the root scene linkage and unnecessary stuff and exported into .USD again. It looks fine, just proper rotation lost. In UE meshes imported separately, materials looks ok. Looking further.