First off… I have worked with Datasmith before, but I have limited experience.
I use 3Ds Max to model and usually texture my buildings. I export them from Max and bring them in UE with Datasmith. Depending on materials, sometimes I need to redo some of them in UE, which is ok.
This time, I’m trying to bring a building that I have modeled with standard materials and finalize it in UE with megascans and substance mats.
However, I never had to re-use a building in a 2nd Level.
How can I update the Datasmith actor, so that when I place it in a new level, it keeps the new materials I set up in UE in the previous level?
Basically I am importing the building in the first level and texture it inside UE, and then I want to place it again in a 2nd level, with the new materials. How can I do that? If I just drag the original uDatasmith actor from the content browser it has the old 3ds max standard materials. Is there a way to update its current state and then be able to re-use it? How is this usually done?
If your model is stricly the same between the two level what you can do is put all the building in a separate level.
Then you can use that “building level” as a sub level in as many levels as you need.
When I create the sub-level for the building should that be completely empty??? Meaning nothing else but the building? Or can I have the sky, atmosphere, PostProcessVolume, etc???
It depends how you want to use it and structure the project.
Any thing that is common to your usage of your model in your different scenes could be but inside your model level. E.g. garden environment, indoor lighting, etc.
if you want to do several different light or surrounding environments for your model you could do:
A main level that holds everything
A sublevel with Night lighting (sky and indoor/outdoor lights)
Another quick question if you don’t mind…
I tried your suggestion and it works beautifully.
Sub level with the building loads as expected. However, if I leave the lighting in the sublevel, when I load the persistent level the scene is completely dark. It only works if I move the lighting in the persistent level.
I know you mentioned you can have a sublevel with the day/night lighting. How can I do that???
You could create one sublevel with all geometry.
Then if you want to have one Night scene and a Day scene:
you can either create a level with the night light and add geometry as sublevel or create a general level, add night light as sublevel and geometry as sublevel
Here a Level with 3 sublevel:
General is an empty level with the 3 sublevels.
Archi contains all the geometry and no lights. It could contain parking lights that are always on (day and night).
Day contains no geometry and all the day light actors: directional light, sky atmosphere , sky light, etc
Night contains no geometry and all the street spot lights, etc.
Then you can just turn on day or light sublevels to change lighting on the scene.
