Importing masses of Marketplace assets; best practices to speed things up?

[skunkiferous]

This post is about content *management *rather than creation, but I think it’s still mostly relevant to this forum.

Over the past 15 months or so, I’ve acquired almost 700 asset packs from the Marketplace. I’ve decided I’m going to use 4.20 to build my (pastime) project (let’s hope it will be stable), as I think I now have all I need. So now, I first have to go thorough all of this, and import (most of) those 700 packs (some I’ll probably ignore; one only needs so many grass materials…). This is going to be a lot of work, so I want to get it right the first time, and waste as little time as possible.

What I know:

• Using a style guide is essential, so I’ll stick to GitHub - Allar/ue5-style-guide: An attempt to make Unreal Engine 4 projects more consistent
• Renaming / Moving assets is a pain in unreal editor, as shown in this thread: File Cleanup: Import, Delete, etc - Feedback for Unreal Engine team - Unreal Engine Forums
• When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.

What I want to know is:

• Is there any kind of “automation” that can help me? (Scripts, editor plugins, external tools, …)
• How do I deal with possibly 100s of packs including slightly modified, differing versions, of the starter content?
• Is there any “How to fix things after they broke because you moved stuff” guide? (Beyond the thread I referred to)
• Anything else I should be thinking about?

[anonymous_user_f472eca2]

What I do is have a separate project called AssetProject that I install any Marketplace assets into.

I can check out those Marketplace assets in that separate project and if there are things I want to bring over to my project, I’ll use the Migrate function from there, that way I only bring over what I want and all it’s dependencies.

I also usually move the assets to a folder in Content/Marketplace/ after bringing them into the Asset project, so when I migrate they go into the right folder in my real project. Then I add the resulting files to Perforce either through the editor or through my workspace view.

This has worked pretty well so far, but there are still some awkward issues that crop up like you mention. Renaming files or folders then doing “fix redirectors” works pretty well to solve some of those issues.

When I upgrade to a new engine version, I make a new AssetsProject for that engine version and use it from then on.

[skunkiferous]

@franktech

As far as your plan of attack managing asset packs, it sounds like you’re about to do something ludicrous time-wise. You risk being the guy who spends all day managing his music collection, not actually playing guitar-piano…

I know; that is why I decided to go for “bleeding edge” (4.20); by the time I’m done, there might be a 4.20.3 …

@franktech

Renaming and moving all those assets is a full-time job. Plus you may never use half of them.

For most things, I try to buy at least two packs, so I can choose the best for my project. So I could very well not use half of those assets.

@franktech

You also need to think about how you will apply Free-Pack-Updates as the engine evolves. If you put them all in a single project it will also cause the Editor to die even if you’ve got a decent PC. You also risk project corruption!

That one I hadn’t thought of. Is there some rule-of-thumb as to how much is too much? Or should I just add packs until the editor starts “crawl” and/or use too much RAM?

@franktech

Then there’s the thorny issue of Backups too…

Still working on this one.

@franktech

Honestly other devs may offer different advice… But I strongly suggest you just get started on your project / game. Start small. Work in isolated folders / projects and build out gameplay / functionality first. Then combine your progress into a single build as you reach milestones. In these isolated projects you can be OCD about structuring hierarchies of folders / naming if you want. But remember, game dev is like film-making or music or any other art. Sometimes you throw out things when you get better ideas. Then all the advance planning goes out the window! Where you actually want to be highly-structured from day-one, is with coding and class structure! That matters far more tbh.

That sounds sensible. My thinking kind of went along those lines: when i have to do some manual work/repair, I first bring all needed tools and materials before I start. Otherwise I spend half of the time going up and down the basement stairs. That is what I wanted to avoid: having to “break the flow” of creating to go and dig through “countless” packages every time I need some specific asset.

@franktech

Last thing… With so many packs purchased, make sure you secure your account from Fortnite hackers!

I don’t have Fortnite; I’m more of a single-player kind of player.

@anonymous_user_f472eca2

What I do is have a separate project called AssetProject that I install any Marketplace assets into.

I can check out those Marketplace assets in that separate project and if there are things I want to bring over to my project, I’ll use the Migrate function from there, that way I only bring over what I want and all it’s dependencies.

I was considering doing it that way. But franktech suggest I might run into some editor limits if the AssetsProject becomes too big. I guess I can always break it up in Environment/Character/… if need be.

@anonymous_user_f472eca2

I also usually move the assets to a folder in Content/Marketplace/ after bringing them into the Asset project, so when I migrate they go into the right folder in my real project. Then I add the resulting files to Perforce either through the editor or through my workspace view.

So you don’t “merge” the asset packs together in AssetsProject, you keep the packs separate, and only move/rename them in your actual project IF you decide to import them?