I am interested in Sharing Materials, Textures, Blueprints, and Meshes etc between Projects. With the migrate procedure it creates a lot of double handling which i think is overkill. It would be good if there was a Common dir where core, shareable assets could be located.
Currently Im looking at a work around by copying Assets over into the Unreal Engine\4.0\Engine\Content\ directory, which looks like it should work. Can i ask why I cant migrate assets to the directory? This would solve some of my immediate problems.
Also, does Unreal precache all of the data in the \Engine\Content\ dir? If so it is likely that using my work around will eventually lead to a sluggish editor due to having massive Asset libraries preloaded.
yeah i have been fighting with a way just to have a large directory with all my assets, materials, etc. in, having to migrate one asset or material at a time is a nightmare, sure there is an easier way, thought i had a way to figure it out by creating custom content folders and then simply copying and pasting them to my new projects, but that breaks all the materials from assigned textures even though im bringing the textures over at the same time. the problem i think (correct me if im wrong) is that the name of the project is not going to be the same everytime so it breaks the directory structure on the assets, theres got to be an easier way to do this than migrating assets one by one from other projects and honestly i have had this overwrite other items and break them as well. right now we have multiple small test projects going on and are trying to build a material library which can be used forward, so hopefully someone has figured out a much easier way of doing this. sure it is real simple if you actually know what your doing, so if someone does please point us in the correct direction.
Ok, I was wrong. I can migrate to \Engine\Content\
So that means I can create a common shared Assets dir here. Now what is the downside of putting assets in this dir? Will it slow up the editor if I have 1000 textures in this folder?
Its a real stumbling block to our pipeline, as we work on many small projects that we want to share a lot of assets, eg core materials, cars, materials, people models.
I believe having better access to \Engine\Content\ that can be version controlled will solve our problem, as long as it doesnt stumble when I copy between versions such as 4.0 to 4.1
It should not impact anything, you can place it there just fine. When you migrate to a new build just copy the folder over in windows from one install to the next.
I doubt it will slow down. Whether you place it in engine or in game. It is the same content at the end of the day, and all of it is displayed anyway by the content browser.
You can use windows in general for all the moving of files back and forth though you have some issues with references, you’d then need to fix.
In UE1 you could host content folders outside the game root via the engine ini. That whole system changed dramatically so I doubt there is still support somewhere but you never know. Scroll through the engine ini and see if there is something there.
[QUOTE=Hourences;38327]
It should not impact anything, you can place it there just fine. When you migrate to a new build just copy the folder over in windows from one install to the next.
Not sure I follow.
I could be reading the original intent incorrectly, but my assumption (and desire) is to have a single, central repository of elements, not maintain multiple copies per project.
If I update a crate in the main repository, anything using M_Crate_001 gets updated in a future build (check ins notwithstanding).
This is a standard workflow within the pipelines I have established over the years working in VFX for Film and TV – i.e. reuse.
I understand if it is not possible given the architecture I have observed with the way projects are setup, just wondering if there is a workflow or alternative to accomplish it, OR, if a future iteration could consider that for inclusion.
Yes so if it is in Engine then it is accessible from all other projects. The only thing is that when you upgrade engine build you need to manually port it over to the new engine directory. If the whole thing is on Perforce or such, you wouldn’t need to though, and the content would transition seamlessly.
The UE1 settings are still there, but I have no luck making them do anything.
Engine ini:
[Core.System]
Paths=…/…/…/Engine/Content
Paths used to allow for redirecting the engine to other locations to look for content, but I have no luck making it actually look in the specified folder so far.
Also Joviex, to get to the Engine content folder from within Editor I normally select the skysphere and then right click / show in content browser. Then suddenly you have access to /Engine/Content
It would be good if it was always visible.
I think if the assets are moved in Editor rather than windows, then it will fix some of the repathing ( though im still testing this).
Hourences - I was able to set-up symbolic links to folders outside of the engine/content and that worked nicely… but I that doesn’t really solve for having to re-make at least one link for every new engine version. It would be nice to set projects to consider external asset directories per project config though.
[QUOTE]
Also Joviex, to get to the Engine content folder from within Editor I normally select the skysphere and then right click / show in content browser. Then suddenly you have access to /Engine/Content
It would be good if it was always visible.
If you click on the view options, you can select what types of folders should be displayed.
I personally like it when the engine folder is kept out of sight
When I put the 3 g resources into the engine \ the content below, slowly open the project file, there is more than 3 g to behind, perhaps more, it would be more slowly, so even with the junction so it’s a headache!!!:mad:
Hi, Is there any way i can add new content assest directory in unreal engine?? I have all my material assets on a shared drive and i want to use them in unreal. Please help if have any way to assign new directory path for contents.
It would be nice if some sort of ‘shared content project’ or link to a master project for some assets would be implemented in Unreal Engine itself (instead of having to create many junctions manually in Windows yourself).
For me as an architect (and I guess archviz people), its about doing small projects that only last a few weeks. Migrating assets works nice but I think it would be even better if you could link to a project with materials, blueprints, sounds etc and updating these assets in the master project would update the assets in the individual projects as well.
Maybe add the option when using an asset to insert it as a link or as a unique object into the project ?
I’ve been using symbolic links to solve this problem currently, just link a directory in Content/ to one with the same name in your working project’s Content/. I set the marketplace/starter ones readonly so i don’t accidentally modify them. I copy assets into my project that i want to modify and just reference the others, makes it easier to diff. Its also possible to put content in a plugin but it’s path will start with the plugin’s name instead of Game/ or Engine/.
Hi @MalikuMane are you still using symlink? I’m in 5.3.1 at the moment, and would be very interested in a more comprehensive explanation (tut?) of how you do this.
Thanks,
Alan
