Sketchup Datasmith Best Practices

Hello everybody,
I work with large scale archviz projects and gradually I’m migrating from a skethup–> lumion to a sketchup–> unreal paradigm. I’ve solved most of the problems but I’m still struggling with the datasmith import method. I will explain with an example hoping that somebody can suggest a better method or you can tell me what I’m doing wrong.

In the example bellow, I have a minaret from a project in the middle east:

I export from sketchup with datasmith and import in unreal, but the problem is that it imports the whole hierarchy of the model and I end up with some 3000 entities for the building which makes everything slow:

I select all the buildings sub-entities and I merge them with merge actors:


after merging, I have a single mesh which is light for the scene but: I’m still left with all the “leftovers”(all the empty actors that correspond to sketchup’s groups and components) which I select and erase.
For this single building the whole process takes up to 5 mins and it’s only a small part of the scene.
I tried exploding everything in sketchup before exporting but it’s very problematic because sketchup merges geometry funily and the time I gain from unreal I lose it in sketchup.

Do you have an idea how I could optimize the whole process?
(maybe another importer or better settings?

anyone?

Would that sentence help? I am not a Sketchup user so not sure how easy it is to put geometry in a group or component.
“Datasmith divides your SketchUp geometry into Static Mesh assets by combining all connected polygon faces that are in the same component or group, into a single Static Mesh. Knowing this strategy can help you influence the Static Meshes it creates.”

from Using Datasmith with SketchUp Pro in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.3 Documentation

Hi! The best solution for now is export datasmith file to Twinmotion at first, it will merge all meshes by material. Than export from twinmotion to unreal engine. The file will be much more light.

Hope it helps.

~Luizão

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