We used the ingame structures like stonewalls,woodfloors, etc and managed to build a house with all assets included.
The building consists of numerous static mesh objects. (do we need to merge those into one?if yes how?)
Next step would be somekind of export so we can add it to our main map.
We tried all available formats. fbx, obj, t3d, lod.obj
lod.obj export crashes at 16% due to low video memory…
We even tried to attach it to the landscape. (no idea if this is needed at all)
The result was always the same.
The building looks good and has smooth fps in the original file but once we add the building to the main map fps drops once near the house and makes it unplayable.
If anyone can assist on this matter I would be thankful
I was actually just about to start this same exact project haha… so you have it built with multiple meshes in a third party software and are trying to import into unreal? In that case you can simply select the features you want exported and select export selection within the modeling software and export as fbx. Then simply import the fbx within unreal and everything should be there… but the mesh won’t have proper collisions unless you create them yourself in which case the mesh exported will need to all be one combined mesh… I use maya for my modeling and can help you directly if you use that as well, otherwise this is the pipeline I use . Let me know if you need help or if that even answered the question haha.
We built the meshes within Ark Dev Kit in a separate file only containing basic stuff and the building. We would like to cook it up into 1 single mesh and then import it into our main map file.
Any ideas how to do this? The collisions are OK we simply would like to merge all our meshes (over 300) into 1 object so we can add it mutliple times into our main map.
BTW: when we try to save it as fbx there is no popup window asking for the settings it just starts away with the export. Is that normal? In a tutorial for export there was always a popup displayed.
We managed to tweak the fog settings properly witch improved the FPS by miles and now the same prefab can by copied simply and does not cause any lag even with added lighting in it.
Merging the meshes into one could possibly require new LOD’s… but I wouldn’t know for certain. As for combining them, I assume what you’ve done is added multiple static mesh components and then built the prefab in the components tab view of the blueprint? If so, I do not know of any means of exporting them the way you have them set up presently.
I know that one way to do it would be to export each of the meshes you’re using, so the wall mesh, the foundation, etc. and in an external program, rebuild the prefab structure then - the important part here to avoid having to retexture the entire thing - assign a temporary material/texture to each of these base meshes so that when you import the single .fbx file after you’re done, UE4 will ask you if you want to combine all of the meshes BUT you will then have the ability to individually specify all of the materials you singled out prior.
What that should essentially allow you to do is have a single material for all meshes of the same type, say for example if you assign the “TempWallMat” to all of the walls that you want to share a material, when you import the new .fbx it should then have a single material that you can specify on the static mesh that will apply that material to all of the meshes you gave that single temp material in the third party program…
If that all makes sense to you haha, and if I understand what you’re wanting to do. If you have the time, give it a try and let me know if it works, as I’ve done exactly this but to a much smaller degree so would be keen to hear if it works on a much larger scale.
I do the same thing too WM. But maya let’s you “combine” the meshes before export while keeping the separate materials. And yeah I don’t think there’s anything you can do to combine meshes in the engine except for the components like WM said… unfortunately the dev kit doesn’t have extensive mesh editing ability
I know, I use Maya and Mudbox (both 2015 versions) for my modelling and texturing needs but not everybody has access to(it’s expensive) or uses(there are alternatives) Maya so it felt prudent to mention that UE4 provides the option on import.
Also, , note that if you attempt it the way I mentioned and try to auto-generate collision, it will either not work, or it will create a massive box around the entire thing and would probably block pawns lol. So custom collision boxes would be needed once this was done. Doors could potentially be problematic. You would need to rebuild the door logic to work in the prefab, and the collision could be an issue - unless you add it to the imported prefab after the fact - but at any rate, either which way you go about it it’s going to take a bit of work to ensure it all works as you intend it to.
However, it really entirely depends on if you want to go through the hassle, as I can’t personally profess to know the pro’s or con’s of either way of going about it.
Thanks for the details mate.
We currently just copy the prefab from the original file into our game map and it seems to work so far.
We will add a large building in the next days and see if it drops fps.
If this doesn’t work we will try the export to 3rd party and back stuff.
The collision part is no issue we had that previously while importing c4d objects to Unity (should be doable)
The door mechanics issue is way bigger and I have no idea how to tackle.
I might be missing the door mechanic issue you are referring too but it is very easy to get a door to snap into the doorframe even if the door frame is a dummy object without the true snap point. Simply open up the door frame and door blueprint and check their snap points for the one that matches them together. Then add a new snap point to your building model with the same attributes the doorframe had and mess with the location numbers till they are right.
