Right now, the process for using assets between projects is rather a pain. Essentially, you have to:
1.Open Project A
2.Find the asset you want to export
3.Migrate the Asset to the new project (with the associated file structure)
4.Close Project A
5.Open Project B
6.Find new asset
7.Correct asset positioning in new project directory structure
8.Close project B (to unload the assets from memory)
9.Open project B
10.Clean up redirectors
11. Remove empty directories
My suggestion to simplify this process is to create a UE Asset Server that runs as a seperate process to UE4, and is optional. The asset server would serve as a repository for all assets that you wanted to use between projects, and would handle direct extraction/injection of assets between projects.
Ideas for implementation:
- An svn-like connection to game projects that allows the user to export an asset and its dependencies to the asset server, with version control, notes, etc.
- Projects Mapped to server could grab assets directly from the server, and map them into the file structure of the new project. (I know there may be issued doing that with the current redirector system)
- Asset packages could be uploaded directly from the server to the Asset Store, or downloaded directly from the asset store.
- Server could could host .fbx packages and import into UE4 as assets.
- Server could notify UE4 users if any content used in the project has been updated.
- Engine Version tracking for assets
- Engine version conversion for single assets (as opposed to entire projects)
There are two main ideas behind this suggestion:
- Create a non-locked repository in the asset pipeline between artists/asset creators and UE4 implementors.
- Create an easy method to store assets in a project agnostic format to fascilitate ease of use.
Alternatively, this functionality could be built into the Launcher, where some of it already exists, but put into a more usable state.