I’m just adding to the chorus of 1000 voices telling you folks at Unreal that you need to drop the FBX idea and make your own importer/exporter to actually allow for everything.
Currently, unless you use my plugin that modifies FBX export to include animation curves (http://mosthostla.com/gamedev/ue4curves) you won’t have the possibility to just export an animation inclusive of animation curves.
You may want to try it out @dandezign
Likewise, because the FBX export in blender does not implement vertex paint correctly, you won’t be able to vertex paint a mesh and import it to UE4. (guess I’ll get back to trying to patch the FBX export to include those…)
Last but not least, IF you won’t or cannot make your own import/export system and file format, then you need to give users the ability to select a different FBX export then the stock one.
Since it seems rather clear that the stock FBX export will never cater just to Unreal -rightfully so, blender needs to support any application- a specific one can/has already/and will be built to handle the way unreal does certain things.
Users should be able to choose which export script to use.
Additionally, the whole “move this to that collection” thing you currently have going on feels troublesome to say the least.
Meshes usually NEED to be parented to the Armature. The process makes the rig and the mesh One object. Splitting them apart is a bad idea for consistency imho.
Setting a mesh to using complex collision is a BAD substitute for allowing to export proper UCX UCB etc. Parts of the assets.
Which also brings back to LODs.
traditionally LODs are handled by associating the mesh to the LOD via an empty.
the way the plugin works now is opposite to that.
How is it going to work with a mesh that has 5 or 6 LODs to go along with when the user needs to move the item around?
It won’t. Or you’ll have to hand select the appropriate meshes to do so, they’ll be split across collections, possibly sub collections, and that’s yet another reason I see having the collection split thing as a horrible idea.
With 1 empty that contains them all the problem is solved.
If anything, the way the empty works should be extended to also handle the collision meshes.
it’s not uncommon to have 30 UCX meshes for simple collision on a cylindrical object of some sort.
if you pair them all up within the same empty you can move the item around freely…