Hi.
Can someone tell me the correct method for managing textures? This is a long one so grab a coffee.
I’m just going to be typing as I think so there will be questions, sometimes it won’t seem like I’m asking a question but any input into my garbled paragraphs would be good.
I’m making assets and have a folder within the content folder called ‘Work Assets’. Here’s the structure.
Content
>AIUE_V01_001 (evermotion)
>Work Assets
>>Exported_FBXs_and_Textures (I’ll come back to this one)
>>Maps
>>Materials
>>>Created Here
>>Meshes
>>Textures
>>>Created Here
I’ve exported an object with textures from Maya. When bringing into Unreal, a material is made automatically.
If I go into the material, I can see the texture.
In the content browser: If I right click a material > ‘show in Explorer’, it takes me to my ‘Materials > Created Here’ folder (I dragged the material into here (chose move, not copy). In Explorer, it shows selects ‘Stone_type1.uasset’… This is understandable, because it’s an Unreal asset/material.
When I go into the the material and double click the texture, it takes me to the texture in the content browser. When I right click it and select ‘show in Explorer’, it takes me to ‘Textures >Created Here’. There, it selects a file called ‘stone04.uasset’.
This is where things start to confuse me.
When hovering over the texture it shows me the textures source file location. When I right click the texture and select ‘open source location’, it takes me to my texture file in ‘Exported_FBXs_and_Textures’.
Right, I’ve seen people on youtube export an object to a location that hasn’t got anything to do with Unreal. They then do their thing. When Unreal creates a material and texture .uasset file, is the texture stored within the file?
If I was to create a fbx onto my c:, then put my unreal project onto another system, or network, when the project is loaded, will the textures still be in the project and assigned to objects even though the source location is pointing to my c:?
What I’m doing as I’m not sure about this is exporting my objects to the Work Assets > Exported_FBXs_and_Textures folder. This means that the textures will always be in an accessible location. Is this the correct method???
And now to another question.
I have an Evermotion UE4 pack. I’ve put the folder that contains Animations, Maps, Shaders etc folders into my content folder. In the content browser, I can use objects, materials etc.
What I plan to do with my assets library, is to put it on my office network so others can access it. However, I’ve used a few materials from the Evermotion pack.
What I’ve done is selected the material and dragged it into my Assets Materials folder. When doing this, does Unreal, also put the texture file (jpg and/or .uasset) into my ‘Work Assets’ directory ?
I don’t think it does. I presume this will mean that if I put my Work Assets folder on the Network, when people use it, the evermotion texture will be missing and Unreal will give an error. A way around this is to tell people they also have to put take the AIUE_V01_001 folder with them too, which defeats the purpose of having a Work Assets folder.
Is there a way of when moving a material to another location, to bring the texture .uasset with it?
I’ve just hovered over the evermotion texture and the source location is in another location altogether (somewhere on the network) and open source location is greyed out. I presume the only way I can access the actual texture is to have my project on the office computer (it’s on my laptop at the moment).
I’ve just right clicked another texture and I get an error saying No Disk in the drive. Hovering over the texture, I can see that it’s pointing to a drive on my boss’ computer. I don’t know what’s happened there.
I presume, if Unreal does save the texture into the uasset file, then this is actually a great thing if texture files are missing.
I’ve just logged onto my work pc and have searched for the missing texture on the network but it isn’t there. This is something we’re going to have to keep an eye on in the office.
I did have an annoying issue once where I was looking for some artwork assets, went into an evermotion pack, saw one I likes and dragged it into the scene. The art it brought it was completely different and then the artwork object changed in the content browser. I presume, because an assigned texture was not on in the content folder, or on the network, Unreal assigned a new one. Which is both annoying and clever.
Many thanks,