Is there a way to name the elements of a mesh? It would be more convenient to use the name of the material (the one from the modeling software) instead of “Element 0”, “Element 1”, “Element 2” … Especially since the highlight feature in the static mesh editor doesn’t seem to work.
Hey DasMatze -
No there is currently no way to name the Elements of a Static Mesh’s Material setup, but the highlight should be functional now.
If you are still having this problem please let us now -
Eric Ketchum
Not sure how but it would be great if this was possible. It takes me a while of trial and error to find the correct material slot.
Is this feature even on the radar? Kind of maddening that something like this isn’t available.
Looks like the FBX keeps record of the name used for each face ID. Any reason why this could not be take into account by Unreal?
Been looking for the same kind of solution myself.
It appears that the material elements of a static or skeletal mesh are numeric indexes that are assigned to converted surfaces/face groups on a first come - first serve basis during content import.
Hence, the only guarantee that your mesh’s material “element 3” will be their torso for example, is if the order of surface/face groups remains the same when imported from whatever 3D modeling software you happen to be using.
If you make significant changes to your surface/face group list, in Blender for example, if the order of surface/face groups changes, then they’ll receive different material element indexes from your previous version of the same imported asset.
Ideally, we need a utility that adds a context menu item when we right-click a static or skeletal mesh, that pops up a spreadsheet in the unreal engine interface with columns for “material element #” and “selected material”, that when we click on a row as you’ve all stated in this post, the correct group of faces from the mesh are highlighted, with the added feature of saving this spreadsheet to comma separated ascii (.csv) or a plain text file, unless I’ve missed a feature in UE5 that I don’t know about.