MDL import process (Revit->3ds->Datasmith->Unreal)

Development Pipeline & Plugins
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1

Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone would be able to shed any light as to the process of importing and MDL materials (created in Substance Designer) into 3dsmax so that Datasmith converts it correctly. I’ve tried Vray MDLmtl and that renders absolutely fine in 3ds max, but this isn’t picked up by unreal during the conversion process. I understand that Datasmith imports MDL textures based on this chart - https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Studio/Unreal-Datasmith/Datasmith-Supported-Software-and-File-Types - I just want to understand how to fix it on my end!

Thanks,

Ben

2

MDL can be imported directly in UNreal and with 4.21 we are improving the stability a bit. We have not spent time transporting MDLs added in a Vray node in Max through Datasmith at this time.

3

Hi Breton,

Thanks for getting back to me. That’s great news! Are you planning on looking at including MDLs added in Max through Vray or Iray into the DataSmith plugin in the future? That’s the only reason we’ve not fully adopted DataSmith at the moment - as we’re having to re-assign the MDLs again in unreal after importing the already MDL textured model from Max via Datasmith.

4

Hi Breton,

Just wondered if any further progress has been made on the MDL import process?

5

So how exactly do I do that? I could not find any information on this anywhere.

6

MDL can be imported in Unreal as any other asset type, from the asset browser | import command.