Hello everybody, I am an architecture student and I’m new to the world of real time visualization, so sorry in advance if i ask something that has already been asked thousand of times. I’ve built this arch model on Rhino v.5 and wanted to switch to UE 4.13 for some walking tours. I read some forums and advices and it seems like the workflow between this 2 programs is not so fluid, as i stated by myself. That’s when I came to know about fabric engine! It seems just like what i need! So I installed it but soon enough many problems came out. First of all, when i press on the Fabric Engine button inside UE, it kind of freezes the app for many seconds… Is this a known issue? Then I try to import the whole scene from my 3dm file as it is, but it seems like too many polisurfaces are in there and when it finally reaches 100% it freezes again. This does NOT happen when I try to import levels separately, but I was wondering, is there a specific way to import the files? Do the polisurfaces and solids have to be turned into meshes before importing? Furthermore when i finally get to import the whole scene, some visualizations issues come to screen, even though no error is shown in the UE dialog after building the scene. Here’s what I see
It seems like the problem is concerning not only shadows. Does the fabric engine autogenerates lightmap UVs?
I would appreciate anyone that could help me with this, or in general, that could guide me though this specific pipeline with any kind of advice!
The first issue is likely due to having to convert to a mesh and then export to UE4.
For the shadow issue in the screenshot, the lightmap resolution for the object receiving the shadow is too low, which is why it looks wavy. I haven’t used Fabric Engine before so I don’t know if there’s something you adjust there but normally you can select the object in the scene in UE4 and change the lightmap override property.
First of all many thanks for the reply, appreciated! So it’s better to transform all solids into mesh before exporting?
I made a screen of the import options, first image. I then tried to import with a bigger lightmap resolution (1024), second pic, and it’s better of course but still not as predicted (third pic). Also, there are some other visualization issues that i don’t know if they depend on the lightmap size. (4th img). I also tried to import with a texture size of 2048 but my laptop crashes at it… What would you change in those import parameters? Is there anything I can do? Thank you very much!
It’s possible that you have some very large surfaces like the floor that are simply too large–the lightmap is an actual image so it has to cover the entire surface so if it’s very large it would need a very high resolution lightmap so it can happen where the object is too large to get enough detail even with a high resolution lightmap. Also, I’m not sure if you can control it in Fabric Engine but if it has bad lightmap UV’s then increasing the lightmap resolution can’t fix it.
It will certainly speed up exporting if your objects are already converted to meshes beforehand
Oh, I see…I was thinking something like that, because, in fact, I have very big surfaces. But too big compared to what? I mean, how can I fix this?
I tried to scale the asset before and after exporting, with no significant results. Also, is it better to have just one high poly mesh, or to divide it into several different mesh? Thx!
Any large objects probably need their own mesh. Smaller meshes or meshes with little surface area can easily be grouped.
Scaling the object won’t have any difference, you have to reduce the surface area in relation to everything else, so if you have a lot of meshes together then you need to split meshes up so that it can use more lightmaps since each mesh only gets one lightmap.
Hi @demondaedra
The freezing you mention is normal. The first time Fabric Engine loads it compiles the different extensions to machine code and this can take up to a minute.
For further questions I suggest you to go to our official forums at http://forums.fabricengine.com/