Whenever I import a Solidworks assembly or part files using Datasmith the UV maps are very inaccurate.
Some textures are stretched, others are super tiny, others have weird distortions.
What kind of workflow should I use to get decent looking assets? I imagine that these issues would extend to shadow mapping.
Another issue that I have is that changing the material and appearance in Solidworks does not influence the type of material in Unreal.
I could import a blue metal and it will be a simple blue diffuse material in Unreal. Do materials have to be set up manually?
I had similar issues with 3ds and Corona. I know Corona isn’t supported as of yet so it’s not a surprise but I found 90% of my materials looked nothing like the ones rendering in 3ds so I had to do them manually. Till they add further support to other software there’s not much you can do. As of UV’s I haven’t a clue how Solidworks works as I’ve never used it.
SW material support is limited right now. One reason is that most people replace the materials with proper UE4 materials to get the best look/performance anyway. We don’t see people doing “look development” in SW. That’s not to say that we won’t try to improve the situation, watch for some efforts in a future release. It’s on the roadmap for improvements.
I can say that I am one of the people who does some amount of look development within Solidworks. Our technical drawings always include a 3D representation of the part or assembly, so materials and appearances matter at that stage. Another tool that I currently use is Keyshot which does a pretty good job of translating the materials and appearances from SW and also keeps them in sync. It is applying a “Keyshot” material, but it does try and get close so you don’t have to do a lot of the work twice.
Just my 2 cents as I start the journey into Unreal Studio.