Okay, It’s either me and my understanding of this that is wrong but the “move to” feature does not work (As I would expect) In fact it has broken several projects of mine and corrupted several assets, I’m posting this to see if either it isn’t intended for what I expect or i’m doing something wrong;
When I move an asset to another folder, be it for organization or w/e, alot of my blue prints start giving off errors, can’t find “previously moved” blueprint, I went into my unreal project file to see that when I had moved them, they had actually stayed and just created copies, (I DID NOT PRESS COPY TO FOLDER), I deleted the folder I had moved them from and now it seems that I have successfully moved the files, yet I still get the errors and some of my coding does not work, although i have not changed any.
Basically, I have a inventory system, it worked fine, I could pick up and drop objects and they was stored, now for some reason, when I pick CERTAIN items up ( they are all children derived from the same parent ) they will not drop but some will.
EDIT: Upon restarting UE4, none of my items will drop, although I can pick them up, it will show their display names on the HUD so they must be getting saved into the Inventory Array, they just won’t drop.
It’s just I would have thought moving folders and organizing assets would have been a straight forward process
I will send a member of the EPIC staff a copy of my project, if they desire.
I am using the most current, 4.4.3, I think it is.
and just to clarify if I already haven’t, everything was working before I did the move, afterwards it didn’t work, I changed nothing, I have been over the blueprints several times and not a single thing has changed, from what I can see everything should work.
The reason it changed is because the filepath is different. Your blueprint is still looking for the asset in its original position. If you could, please try re-assigning references to the moved asset in the blueprints in question and see if that fixes the errors.
I’m still learning UE4 so forgive me for the next question, is there a way to do this easily? like some sort of in-built way or would I have to go through it all doing it manually?
This is something that is currently being worked on. Some of it has been addressed in 4.5 but it is still under assessment and I do not have a timeframe available for it being addressed.
Hi, I am using UE 4.9.2, and this problem still exists. The date is 25 Oct 2015
I created an empty project from FP template (using 4.9.1). Then I changed a few things, added landscape and foliage. I moved two folders containing assets from the root folder to a sub folder. They were successfully “moved”. However, the old folders are still there, “empty”. When I try to delete them I get a message that there are still referenced assets in them. So in effect my assets were not moved, just copied, the old ones were hidden, but their references to the map etc were left in place! What am I supposed to do?
Thanks, I tried that on the whole Content folder, and indeed the “phantom” files were removed correctly.
However, a few files that I don’t think I ever touched were also deleted. I am using the GIT plugin, and UE has automatically removed files like “\Content\FirstPerson\Animations\FirstPerson_StartJump.uasset”. They are removed and staged in GIT. The deleted files have counterparts that are not deleted, like “FirstPerson_JumpStart.uasset”. Notice the similarity in name.
And here is my explanation: the guys who created the FPS template that I am using renamed these files and didn’t run the “Fix up redirectors” magical feature before releasing the template to the public. So now by running it I also cleaned up their phantom files.
As you can see, the “Fix up redirects” helps quite a lot but doesn’t solve the problem. I’m not the only one having this problem. And I don’t think people should have to fix redirects every time they move, delete or rename a file.
just started using UE4 all i want do to is move the template into an imported assets folder and its literally impossible, the most difficult thing i’ve ever done when using a new engine, why is something so easy to actually do so difficult to do in EU4?..
Are you experiencing a particular difficulty? The process should be straightforward:
Select assets/folders you wish to move
Move them to the new location
Right mouse button on the affected folders and press “Fix Up Redirectors”, this should remove the redirects that were created and properly route content.
Having said this, it is significantly more advisable to simply import assets or create assets in the location you want them to prevent needing to clean up redirectors. Is there a specific error or trouble you are experiencing with this?
it just seem’s to not copy or move everything only certain things, the third person template is what i’m using, even when i move them to a new location the map file doesn’t move, once i do as you have stated, the folders are left behind still.
That seems more problematic than what is listed here in the engine’s current state. If you could, please make a new thread specifically for the error you are seeing. In it, describe the error and please list what reproduction steps we can take to reproduce the error on our end in a clean, blank project. Specifically, it is important to know if it is limited to a single type of asset (maps) or if this occurs to any asset you try to move, any additional information you can provide in this new post will help us to determine what the error you are seeing may be.
Thank you for your 3 step description of how to do this.
I did steps 1 and 2 and was having problems deleting the original folders
I was missing
3) Right mouse button on the affected folders and press “Fix Up Redirectors”, this should remove the redirects that were created and properly route content.
I am currently doing a massive house cleaning on our project. We use Perforce for version on control and this is what I did to get things to go where I want them:
Make sure everyone on the team has submitted through Perforce. This caused us a lot of headaches. Some people had old files checked out in old workspaces. Standardization is uber-important. Make sure everyone is checked in and your using good version control practices.
Make sure whoever is doing the moving has complete control of all of the items you want to move and the folder you want to move things too.
All I do it drag items to the new folder and hit the resultant “Move Here”. Renaming is obviously simple. But this is where it gets tricky.
Clean up redirectors. Right click the folder you just moved things from or are going to delete. Basically anytime you do anything to a folder… so for example: I just moved everything from a folder and that folder is empty. I’m going to delete it. But, I find that most of the time, these folders are not really empty and if you look in Explorer, you can see that. Fixing up redirectors will do that.
Delete your folder in the content browser.
Go to Explorer and delete the folder there. Also key or Unreal will pick it back up. When that happens, Perforce will think you have deleted the folder. Unreal will think you’ve added a new folder… The result. You will smash your monitor and have no hair left.
Bottom Line. After you move stuff… Fix up redirectors.
An addendum to this… If you rename a folder, Windows will make a copy. So, fix up redirectors and then delete the old folder in Explorer.
I believe UE4 is a very powerful engine but it has this terrible source issue, I stopped working on a few projects because of that and Fix up redirectors.mostly do not fix the issue while moving assets. Example if you did a level design and you used a marketplace projects after that you decided to organize these assets in a new one mesh folder and materials folder etc, Than you, will face a huge missing source even you followed the epic guideline. I posted much time for epic to fix this issue and they do keep doing upgrades without fixing the previous problems. ALL OTHER SOFTWARES YOU CAN MOVE ASSETS EASLY WITH AUTOMATIC SOURCE UPGRADE, EXCEPT UE4. I FEEL VERY DISAPPOINTED.
I just wanted to link this doc page for anyone else who is finding this. As someone learning Unreal for the first time, it is frustrating to encounter these sort of things, which you would expect to be simple. While many people are giving advice on how to fix this, the docs go into more detail as to why you may be encountering it. https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/ProductionPipelines/Redirectors/
The expectation that “moving things” is simple, is the bug. It isn’t simple, if you’re working in a large project with many people involved. Unreal optimizes for creating large projects, across many creators. If that’s not a feature you need, Unreal can still be a good engine for you, but it’s not optimizing for you.
Why is “moving things” hard? Mainly, because of source control. Every asset that used to refer to path X, must be updated to refer to path Y instead, which generates MASSIVE diffs, and large re-downloads for everyone on the team. You need to minimize these effects. This is why Unreal creates redirectors – any asset that refers to the moved asset, can still refer to path X, and it will work.
Your build automation can then run a script to resolve all redirectors and remove them, at well defined times – maybe every week-end? And everyone can have a script to re-download anything that changed on Sunday night or something.
(You do have build central automation, right? If not, you’re not challenged by the large-scale production process, and thus the things that Unreal solves, might not be a great match for you. Yet.)
Hi, Thanks for the reply. That puts some context to it. That being said, if you want people to learn the engine to the point where they can use it in a large team context, it would be helpful to support them in those early steps. Unreal is also marketing itself as being an accessible engine, usable for teaching etc so it would be helpful if the documentation supported that. I would suggest hiring someone from outside Unreal to make some guides as many of the things that are assumed knowledge within the unreal community are very confusing to developers coming into the engine for the first time.
