Overall let me first say that Unreal Engine is awesome and I have switched from Torque 3D to Unreal Engine because of its flexibility, ease of use, powerful tools and generally faster iterations than I could ever achieve in Torque 3D or any other engine. Please keep it up … you guys are doing an awesome job.
My one gripe however is the asset moving/renaming and the blank folders that are always left behind during this process. It is a major chore to get assets in to my preferred naming convention and folder structure that I prefer to use. I have basically resorted to creating a project for the various assets … I then migrate assets to that … and then start the renaming process and moving process. After I perform a step … I save the project … close the project … go to the folder structure and make sure the folders are actually empty … and then remove them.
This basic process is rinsed and repeated until I get the project opening with no errors. The folder removing is basically a copy to a temporary folder to make sure all assets are indeed un-linked and moved. Surely the editor should be able to handle this process for me … and I should have to continuously do this to make sure.
Once I am done and everything is still working and in my naming conventions … I then check the project in to source control and start the whole process again for the next set of assets. Below are some screen shots of what I mean … I am busy moving the Ultimate Rocks from the Marketplace in to this project in order to migrate it to my actual project.
The image below shows Folder structure and you can see I have a Material and Texture folder (my new folders) and a Materials and Textures folder (the original asset folders).
This is the Material folder that has the moved assets in it.
This is the Materials folder that no longer shows any assets in it,
However if I go to Windows explorer as shown below, the folders are also there as above.
But if I go in to the Materials or Textures folder, there are still UASSET files that are not shown in the editor.
If I remove these folders … the editor will generate issues although they are not actually in the editor.
And this is fundamentally the problem. So I have to sometimes move a folder a couple of times in the editor and eventually it will come right. This is however not always guaranteed and is sometimes very hit-and-miss.
Now I know that this may seem like a small and petty issue, but I keep my projects structured and named according to a strict standard for very specific reasons:
- Project is easier to manage
- Team members know where to find particular assets or blueprints
- Project is more consistent
- Offending assets can be easily identified
Could you please look in to this for me. Maybe I am doing something wrong (although I doubt it) and maybe you could provide some insight or even maybe some suggestions. If you could fix this … then that is even more awesome.
As I said … the Engine is awesome and you guys are doing a **** fine job. Not once have I ever felt that my subscriptions was a waste of time or money and I plan to use Unreal Engine for as long as it will have me.
My apologies for the long post, but hopefully I provided enough information.