Hi,
I’m a teacher and my students are using Unreal 4. Students are creating maps and assets with UE4. They’ve been submitting me maps as a .umap, and their assets (uassets) in a zip file. When I place the map and assets in my project, the connections from the map to those assets are lost.
How can I have this kind of workflow and retain those connections? In UDK you could just open the package in the content browser and then load the map and everything would be fine. How can I do that in UE4? Do I need to completely change around my workflow?
In order for the references to work correctly when you add the assets and umap files to your project they will need to have the same folder structure as what your students have in their project.
So for instance, if they have their materials assets in Content > Materials you will need to make that you place the assets in the same folder in your project.
To make things easier on yourself, it may be best to have them to create their own folder with their name and then setup their assets or folders inside this folder.
You can have them setup whatever folders they will need whether it’s one for Maps, Materials, Meshes, Textures, etc. Then they will only need to migrate out their folder. It will pull any other dependencies outside of their personal folder that may be used as well if it’s referenced (such as using Starter Content and using a mesh from that folder that’'s not in their personal folder structure.)
Here’s a sample screen shot of maybe a good starting point for the folder structure that can keep it a little more sane without losing the references.
The only instance where something in their own student folder would become an issue is let’s say they used an asset in their map that’s not in their folder and you don’t have that asset in your main content folder it will lose it’s reference. Ideally, if they keep everything they use in their folder you shouldn’t have any issues.
If you have any issues once they try this method let me know. I think I covered the gist of it and didn’t miss anything.
This is the first time I’ve ever faced such a problem. Usually the binding of documents was of high quality and gave a complete picture of the students. I want to believe that this structure, which is used in my work, will not fail.
In this thread, I found more than I was looking for. Thanks to all who responded. How convenient it is to live in the 21st century. When there are a lot of specialists around, and everyone wants to help.
I think it’s also important to note that as a general best practice it’s best to have your content under one single parent directory (under content) and have all your work under it so that adding other people’s work (for instance assets from the marketplace or such) would never create collisions with your own work (which could be an immense pain to fix)
(PS: Can someone clean up all the spam in this thread? it’s very annoying to look at)
