All I wanted is an import option that let you use the import transforms as UE4 transforms while keeping the mesh pivot at the original object’s pivot, so for example if it was a door it would revolve perfectly when rotated. Right now when importing normally you can either have pivots stripped from meshes and be able to drag them out all at once while keeping the design from the 3d software, or keep the original object’s pivot but only be able to drag them in a huge pile.
What you really want though is something that lets you use the import transforms as UE4 transforms while keeping the mesh pivot at 0,0,0. I guess this isn’t possible because the normal import option doesn’t actually place the mesh anywhere, it just imports it into the content browser, letting you place it where you want. This isn’t what you want if you’re designing levels in a 3d software though, you want the design in the 3d software and the design in UE4 to match perfectly.
The Import into level feature got me excited but while testing it I found lots of problems. First off you can only do a full scene reimport when using the huge blueprint with lots of components option. Having a huge blueprint like that is not ideal, it would be better if you have smaller more specialized blueprints, and some things you wouldn’t really want to convert into blueprints at all, but it’s necessary for the full scene reimport to work. It would be better if instead you didn’t create a blueprint but replaced meshes (if they already existed in the level) on an object name basis.
This leads me to the second problem which is that you can either reimport everything or not reimport at all. If you make a tiny change in one mesh you have to reimport everything, which is pretty strange since you can reimport a single mesh from an .fbx file with multiple meshes using the normal import method. This alone is a huge pain when iterating on levels since you can’t work on a mesh level, only a scene level. Rather than a reimport taking a second or two it can take a minute or even several minutes if you’ve got a huge level.
There are other issues too like reimporting the level replaces any material edits you have done in the level, so it could make you lose work, and more, but I will just paste the issues I found in my short time testing it below.
I’m just trying to say that it would be nice if there was an import option that behaved like the normal import method but put the meshes in the level using the import transforms as UE4 transforms while keeping the mesh pivots where they were. A second click of this new import option would import the whole level again, replacing the meshes with the same objects from the .fbx file (and changing the transforms too), adding any new ones and so on. Probably not delete any old ones because I think you would still want the option to place meshes manually without losing them on a scene reimport. The meshes would still behave like normal meshes which means that a .reimport of a single mesh would reimport that mesh only and not the whole level. The reimport level option wouldn’t replace materials if they were already assigned, as in had an existing material when reimported.
Some issues I found with Import into level: