Need help replacing old viz with Unreal Engine

Development Architectural and Design Visualization
1

Warning, I’m a newby to UE (just started investigating the engine last week). I’m working for a client that has their own (old) 3D visualization engine which they want replaced so that their software can be used on mobile (and desktop) machines. The client’s software is used to generate 3D physics simulation results and then the data (stl files for 3D objects & xls files for time vs position & orientation of rigid bodies) is sent to their 3D visualization engine to display the results and play back the animation.

I’m trying to figure out how I can use UE to display the physics simulation results instead. The (simplified) user’s workflow would be something like this:

  1. run client’s software to generate simulation results
  2. copy result data (zip) to mobile device
  3. run UE viz app on mobile device
  4. open result data file and extract stl and xls files contained within it
  5. populate UE scene graph with stl data for visualization
  6. click “play” button in app to start the animation
  7. update poses of each 3D object based on data extracted from xls files

The part that I’m stuck on right now is step #5. How can I load an stl file during run-time and have it appear inside the UE scene? All the online tutorials that I’ve found so far talk about importing 3d data into UE using the Content Browser, but that won’t work for me.

Any help or tips for a newby would be greatly appreciated!

2

You would have to code your own STL file support, that’s not a format that game engines use and typically the engine doesn’t support 3D file format import in-game anyway. For example, although the editor can import OBJ and FBX you can’t do that in the game only in the editor. So for whatever 3D file support you want you would have to code a solution.