Why does Unreal no longer support T3D

[anonymous_user_3a5ffb9c]

Hey everyone,
I’m new to Unreal and moving from Unity. One thing I really wish Unreal had was text based asset serialization. While searching online I found out that Unreal 3 used to support the text file assets T3D. Why is this no longer supported? I’m curious because this would be very helpful in collaboration and version control. It would be easier to diff, check changes before I commit, and merge files.

Thanks for helping a newbie!

[Roy_Wierer.Seda145]

I don’t know why UAssets are like this but it’s definitely a pain with version control. If you work in a team you need to properly lock and synchronise UAssets. Also, BP assets are huge compared to c++ files.

It’s not impossible to lock UAssets (check Git LFS and marketplace plugins) and it is even possible to diff them to some point but you want to stay away from BP as far as possible by implementing most things in c++. Some things you do want to do in BP are widget design (logic included) and animation blueprints (state machines, blends etc.) because you need their editor panels (programmers too.).

[anonymous_user_3a5ffb9c]

I definitely would agree on the collaborative version control. I’ve had situations where I’ve locked a file and then it’s gotten unlocked due to our git process only to lose a few days of work.

@Roy_Wierer.Seda145

you want to stay away from BP as far as possible by implementing most things in c++

Our team of designers is not technical enough and many of the things we’ll need to work on need to be done in blueprint (as we are unable to implement it in c++ ourselves)

@Roy_Wierer.Seda145

Some things you do want to do in BP are widget design (logic included) and animation blueprints (state machines, blends etc.) because you need their editor panels (programmers too.).

This is interesting and I’ll definitely look into this.

[Chiefwhosm]

I know AntIGravity mentioned Copy/Paste, but just to add that .t3d works with that too, as in bsp brushes etc. provided they respect the UE4/5 changes of layout.

[anonymous_user_3a5ffb9c]

@AntiGravity

While its not a complete solution it can still be used to Diff (as the editor built-in diff is often hopeless).

Took a look at this and it seems very helpful and I’m able to see what I’ve changed when diffing the text. I’m curious about all the stuff that is missing from this though. For instance any redirectors, blueprint variables, etc.

@Chiefwhosm

I know AntIGravity mentioned Copy/Paste, but just to add that .t3d works with that too, as in bsp brushes etc. provided they respect the UE4/5 changes of layout.

Sorry I didn’t understand this, what am I adding .t3d to?

[anonymous_user_3a5ffb9c]

Also, here is a link to the Epic staff post about the experimental Blueprints text save feature in case you want to try it sometime too.
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Very cool…will look into this. This was also 3 years ago…I wonder if it’s still in the works.

[anonymous_user_3a5ffb9c]

@anonymous_user_2d3ed244

You can enable the experimental support (TextAssetFormatSupport in experimental settings) and then right click on a blueprint and select export to text asset (don’t recall the exact phrasing).

Hmm…wasn’t able to find this experimental feature. I wonder if support for it stopped with UE5. (This quote was from the post from 2019)