The Datasmith tool is four very bad BUG

Development Pipeline & Plugins
,
1

After a long period of time, I found that Datasmith had four very serious BUG.

  1. when my model in 3DS Max does not use reset transformation and collapses, it will have a lot of location offset with the Datasmith tool import, and the offset is very outgoing. He usually appears in a model that is rotated, zoomed, or is a modifier, and can not be adjusted in UE4. All models must be collapsed, add reset, and collapse again before they can import UE4 normally. Otherwise, this problem will easily arise when imported. This problem is very serious. It even affects my normal work to a great extent. Sometimes I think it is not as stable as FBX’s way of importing.

  2. when I import 3DS Max such as mixed material, it automatically breaks the node in UE4 and the material becomes black. At the same time, it is too bad for translucent material conversion.

  3. when I used the reimport tool, sometimes he did not delete the current instance, and then imported the model again, making the model two overlaps, which was also very bad, and I didn’t even dare to use it again.

  4. when I import the model, sometimes when some models are imported, its main body is not a static grid object, but a Actor, the static grid object is in the component of the Actor, which makes me choose them to become very troublesome. I can choose all the static grid objects once in a time, but now I have to do it one by one. It’s very troublesome to click on them, find components, and modify the corresponding options.

I don’t understand why there are so many fatal problems in the version of Datasmith tool, but I haven’t repaired them in time. Is this future even a monthly payment of $49? If it’s a recent version of the use experience, I think it gives me a bad experience, a variety of BUG, and it’s not even as stable as the previous update, but no one has repaired them!

2

hi ,

i agree with u… those bugs are fatal(on wip) and really annoying which i’have experienced before. but there is no other tool available for us to get the instance structure and the material setup preserved.

I’m not as pessimistic as you are, I think this bugs will be fixed after beta release.

so im working on huge archviz project. I dont do this without datasmith.

i hope those bugs fixed before than release. so it will be easy to decide.

3

Give 4.20 Preview a try. There is a much-improved re-import workflow. Did you report any of the bugs you mentioned? How are we supposed to know about these issues if you don’t?

Report Unreal Studio bugs here: https://unrealstudiohelp.epicgames.com/s/article/How-do-I-report-a-bug

4

Thank you, I hope you can repair these problems as soon as possible, and I will report you to BUG as much as I can.

Then I encountered another BUG these days. The model I imported in 3DS Max, after I imported it, checked it. It seemed normal. But when I opened the gate second times, they became very confusing, shifting around, looking very bad. It seems that this usually exists in objects converted to Actor. It seems that there is no Actor solution in the 4.18 version, and now it seems that Actor is really a very bad solution, and that his BUG and the damage to the process are very serious.

5

Hi there ,

Thank you for logging your issues :slight_smile:

As for the last issue, i’m not exactly sure i understand correctly.
Let me try to go through your step again and let me know if this is correct:

  • You used datasmith to import 3ds Max file in Unreal
  • Once In Unreal , everything is normal
  • You used reimport and then your meshes are really bad? shifting around ? is that it?
    You are unhappy with the Actor solution in 4.20, thats right?

There’s some information on this matter here :
https://unrealstudiohelp.epicgames.com/s/article/Why-do-my-meshes-import-as-Actors-instead-of-StaticMeshActors

cheers

6

We are experiencing similar issues with the latest version of Unreal Engine (4.20 preview 4) in combination with the latest version of the 3ds Max exporter.

  • We export our scene from 3ds Max, without any errors.
  • We Import using Datasmith into a new map, everything works fine :slight_smile:

Now…

  • We update something mesh related in 3ds Max and export the Datasmith file again.
  • Run a re-import in Unreal on the Datasmith file.
  • Suddenly meshes are duplicated, rotated, moved, missing the materials we applied in Unreal, actors are even moved outside of the DatasmithSceneActor in the outliner…

I tried to replicate these issues with a new 3ds Max test project to see if I can pinpoint it down somehow but of course in the test project everything works fine.
Happy to create a bug report but I can’t recreate it at the moment so I’m not quite sure how I can help :frowning:

edit:

I did some more testing by taking the troubling scene, removing all it’s materials in 3dsMax and replacing it with one vray material without any maps and now I don’t get any issues. Did a few re-imports after moving, deleting and doing all kinds of stuff in 3dsMax just to try and break it but now I don’t see the strange issues as listed above.
Can something material-exporting related cause these weird issues ? Maybe something the export isn’t detecting but still breaking the Datasmith file somehow.

8

Yes, I encountered the same problem as you in 4.192. I have come to the conclusion that there are several reasons for this phenomenon.

  1. if you use LevelSteam, when the project is reopened each time, the models that Datasmith import into the secondary Level have a great chance of making mistakes, especially those with father and child levels.

  2. if the model in your 3DS Max does not pass the reset transformation, they will import UE4 into Actor, and the father son relationship of Acotr is very easy to cause this situation, unless you dissolve all the Actor paternal relationships, they still have a large probability of error.

I haven’t used 4.20 yet. If you say so, it’s a pity that Epic still seems to have failed to repair these serious problems.

9

Please retry with the latest 4.20 Preview (5). Preview 5 should be very close to the final release (hopefully next week). If you’re still seeing issue, then please report them. We’re not seeing a lot of bug reports, so we think everyone is being very successful.

Report Unreal Studio bugs here: https://unrealstudiohelp.epicgames.com/s/article/How-do-I-report-a-bug

10

Hello, I have done some tests on Datasmith with 4.20, and the function of re importing has been improved a lot. But the problem of Actor still seems to be unsolved.

Importing the model into Actor will really destroy the entire workflow, for example, I want to open FarShadow for all of my models, but many of my models are imported into Actor by Datasmith, so that I can only click on them one by one, select Actor, select Staticmesh, and then open them one by one. Originally, I could unify them and set all the options at once, but now I have to solve them one by one.

I remember that there was no problem in 4.18 of Datasmith, although 4.18 of the Datamsmith occasionally misplaced the Mesh, but the workflow without Actor was really smooth.

I don’t know the principles, but I think maybe you can set them up as ordinary father sons. It’s as if they had just made simple attachments and became father son relationships instead of importing them in the form of components in Actor. In this way, we still retain the independent components of Staticmesh and facilitate lots of batch operations. I don’t know whether this is feasible or not. This is just one of my suggestions.

As for the use of LevelSteaming after restarting the project, the location of Actor or Mesh, and the completely incapable BUG, I haven’t tested in 4.20, I hope they have been solved.

The progress of Datasmith tools is very fast, but can we consider adding more options? What seems to be a little too little of the available options? Although EPIC says we can customize with blueprints or Python, not everyone has this capability. Especially for Datasmith, illusory studios are more targeted at lightweight architects such as architectural visualization. They usually lack programming knowledge, do not have the ability to use Python or even blueprints, if you can add more commonly used options, such as custom conversion parameters, strength, and so on, that will allow Datas Mith becomes more valuable and allows users to solve many problems on their own.

Hello, this is just my advice to Datasmith. Datasmith is really good, but we always want it to be better. I start using it frequently when I test it from Datasmiht, so I also hope it will become an important part of my workflow. I hope Datasmith can get better and better.

11

Thats because one of the instanced mesh has a customized pivot. When we have this situation we revert to the 4.19 (actor) method. If all your instances share the same pivot offset, then it will be as you expect it.

Datasmith actors can be placed on sublevels, let us know if thats not working for you and log a defect describing what the problem is, we will have a deeper look.

We will eventually get there. Our vision is to create a import dialog that can be customized with “import receipes” that are different depending on where the data came from: the strategies are different if you have max models compared to sketchup models or revit models.

We will not start adding UI options that are specific to situations that don’t apply to all data sources. If we start doing so, the UI will become a mess really quickly and won’t serve anyone. We are also still learning about how our users are working. As we learn we are prototyping with python and see how we can automate the optimization of models that way.

At some point we will package a series of “tools” that are adapted to various use cases. Tools that will be customizeable by users.

For example, if you import a revit model, we might combine curtain wall instances by host (glass, mullions) and convert glass panes as single polygons (deleting 5 out of 6 faces). This is of course possible with metadata that Revit gives us. So in that case, the import dialog will show small “bricks” that say: import data –> simplyfy glass panes —> merge curtain wall objects –> make LODS for all objects

Of course, if we import a model coming from Max, those “bricks” won’t show up as the context will be totally different.

So to your comment, we will not blindly add options as checkboxes or menus. That won’t scale. We will do something much more flexible, but it takes some time.

12

Hello, the 3DS Max custom axis leads to the problem of Actor. I’ve seen the scene guide you provided, and I used the reset transformation command to solve this problem before. But I don’t know if you have a lot of tests. The reset transformation of 3DS Max is not perfect. When it comes across a mirror object, or a model made by a symmetric command, and some other type of model, the reset transformation will cause all the surfaces to turn over and sometimes appear irregular. In general, these modeling methods are essential, so this method also produces a very large amount of work, so the reset transformation is not a perfect solution.

With regard to sublevel issues, I want to express whether they are the same as Figure 2 below, they are paternity relationships that exist in the world outline view, using a multi-layer way to restore the axis information in 3DS Max, rather than as Figure 1, they are added to the Actor as Actor components. If they can be imported like Figure 2, then I can still select all of their StaticMesh at once. If it’s like Figure 1, I can only click Actor one by one, and then set up StaticMesh related attributes, for example, I want to set up FarShadow in batch. Or is it to open the semitransparent shadow? These batch operations are very cumbersome under the existing solution of Figure 1. If all the models can be imported like Figure 2, I think there is no big trouble for batch operation.

As for the problems in LevelStaeming, I will test them in 4.20 and submit the test results to you through your BUG submission website.

Thank you for your reply.