Datasmith Feature Requests

[sc-stsubasa]

I want to call additional original process with Open and Close of "SComboBox".
but "OnMenuOpenChanged()" function not haved delegate.
Could you add a delegate in a future update?

[Chesire]

-Functionality enhancements:

1) The option to NOT generate lightmap UV's on import (especially with messy large scenes or high poly models that will only use dynamic lighting anyways)
2) Option to define a default master material on import that Studio will use to set up instances from (see how Quixel did this for Megascans)
3) 'Architectural' versions of LOD presets and the option to define Automatic LOD generation on import (invaluable for scenes with many props)
4) 'Architectural' Camera with proper Perspective correction controls (essential for Arch-Viz)
5) Import 'replace asset for' Check (or do it on export) where if a scene contains objects with identical triangle/vertex count, it's possible to define 1 master, and the rest instances of that mesh (right now it will just create 200 chair meshes if those meshes have different names and/or materials, which might already occur when you do a dirty merge inside your source-app and lack time to clean things up.

-Visual fidelity enhancements:

1) Screenspace Bevels/Round edges
2) Screenspace procedural dirt/cavity

Please check this out (ignore the weird voice but the pronunciation of certain terms is quite funny)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy79zS1sv3Y

Lumion has this. Unigine has this. All offline renderers have it. Why? Cause -with a few clicks- it makes your models look amazing xD

We know Epic has a couple of ultra talented shader guru's.
Yes they are of course extremely busy but maybe we can crowdfund them a puppy if this would become reality?

[JKaiser4]

Please Filter UV Map creation. In the current cad importer decals in Solidworks are not being imported and the uv maps are being overwritten.

[jkcameron]

First off I wanted to say great job on the progress thus far with Revit and UE interop. Long time coming and it is finally here. Attending Unreal academy in Raleigh and super excited.

Autodesk recently added PBR support for materials in 2019. They have included 4 base materials from which all materials should be created. Its your typical PBR set:
Opaque
Transparent
Metal
Layered
These can be found under the asset browser under Misc.

I just recently converted our company materials library to reflect these new additions only to find these import into Unreal as Unsupported. Perhaps the Unreal team could modify Datasmith to work with these new materials templates? I was trying to determine what Datasmith didn't like about the new materials; a specific map maybe or a setting but no matter what i change they always import as unsupported.

Please look into this... Greatly appreciated.

Here is a screenshot from the Appearance Library (new PBR Materials)




Thanks
John

[TheGabmeister]

Great to see more features being added to Unreal Studio.

[Rawalanche]

1) The option to NOT generate lightmap UV's on import (especially with messy large scenes or high poly models that will only use dynamic lighting anyways)

I can not stress this enough. I am currently visualizing high poly vehicle model which originated from CAD. Everything will be dynamic, no baked lighting. It's about 10M polygons total with lots of tiny pieces. Datasmith wastes majority of import time creating lightmass UVs on this ridicuously complex model just for them to never be used.

[pf_breton]

First off I wanted to say great job on the progress thus far with Revit and UE interop. Long time coming and it is finally here. Attending Unreal academy in Raleigh and super excited.

Autodesk recently added PBR support for materials in 2019.

I just recently converted our company materials library to reflect these new additions only to find these import into Unreal as Unsupported. Perhaps the Unreal team could modify Datasmith to work with these new materials templates? I was trying to determine what Datasmith didn't like about the new materials; a specific map maybe or a setting but no matter what i change they always import as unsupported.

This is correct. The revit api gives us new hook to read that data but its something we have to add in our exporter. That is why you don't see them exported at all: our exporter is currently 'blind' on it and we have to write extra code to support them.

[pf_breton]

I can not stress this enough. I am currently visualizing high poly vehicle model which originated from CAD. Everything will be dynamic, no baked lighting. It's about 10M polygons total with lots of tiny pieces. Datasmith wastes majority of import time creating lightmass UVs on this ridicuously complex model just for them to never be used.

Yes we are working on that problem

[barf_nz]

Please update the heightmap import system!

It seems to use 16-bit numbers (65535 values) but GIS data these days is 32-bit (or even 64-bit) precision. 16 bit values just don't cut it with LiDAR, in my case with 2cm vertical resolution and elevation differences greater than 1200m, this word size is overflown. I can hack-down the quality of the DEM/DSM for Unreal, but that doesn't seem right given the old Assetto Corsa engine handled the LiDAR, but it was represented as a TIN (the Landscape system is raster-only) and used 32b vertex values (TINs are essential for memory management with 32b values, rasters are not an option, and I find it weird that Unreal has this mipmap approach for raster terrain, because it means unnecessarily storing redundant vertex data).

Must admit I'm new to developing with this engine, but Unreal would benefit from linking into GDAL or something so that GeoTIFFs can be imported directly. I looked at a plugin called terraformpro but this type of functionality is free in blender and how does it even get around Unreal's internal landscape representation values being 16 bit?

[barf_nz]

Hello, please upgrade the heightmap import system!

It seems to use 16-bit numbers (65535 values) but GIS data these days is 32-bit (or even 64-bit) precision. 16 bit values just don't cut it with LiDAR, in my case with 2cm vertical resolution and elevation differences greater than 1200m, this word size is overflown. (FWIW I can import a TIN/mesh no problem, was just hoping to use the landscape system, but not if it means using rasters full of redundant vertex data... at a fraction of the vertical resolution...)

Must admit I'm new to developing with this engine, but Unreal would benefit from linking to GDAL or something so that GeoTIFFs can be imported directly! I found a plugin called terraformpro but how does it get around Unreal's landscape system's internal values being 16 bit?

[david.gillespie]

Hi - really think Enterprise is heading in an interesting direction, particularly with Twinmotion and where UE4 is heading with RTX integration. Looking forward to hearing about your latest roadmaps soon on both fronts.

We've started using Mixed Reality as the Reverb is a great headset from a resolution perspective so very much up our street and with the new Vive Pro as well, we are wanting to make sure everything runs off the same base code rather than building for various headset platforms. Unreal has been great for Oculus and Vive for this however Mixed Reality seems lacking behind. We've noticed:

• Mixed Reality appears integrated in the VR template but not the Enterprise networked multi-user template. It's a great template for lots of use cases so a Mixed Reality update would be most appreciated.
• Twinmotion doesn't appear to be supporting VR as the icon is greyed out and the doesn't appear to be any online support any more after the acquisition. We'd love to get this up and running with Mixed Reality too (google cached links even suggest that this is possible).

Any updates on these fronts would be most appreciated!

(plus that c# integration we're after! )

[pf_breton]

thanks david, i sent the comment to our team handling the templates and the twin motion team!

[david.gillespie]

Awesome. Thanks very much - most appreciated

[david.gillespie]

Looking into the Datasmith Rhino import, is there any way of exposing this as a runtime function? We would like to be able to directly import Rhino geometry into a built project at runtime. Exposing this functionality would avoid having to do workarounds using OBJ exports/imports with 3rd party extensions (such as ASSIMP).

I'm sure product viewer type apps would really appreciate this kind of functionality.

[TimLobner]

There are three things which would really be neat in UE:

1.) Texture Arrays would improve the efficiency in some use cases dramatically, since one could use indices to access textures rather than calculate the correct UVs for texture atlasses (especially in some techniques, which require you to use a "random" placing of textures within the atlass in order to avoid filtering issues)

2.) Dynamic terrain generation

3.) LOD creation / other optimization features at game runtime (even with a kind of "Loading Screen" to appear and stall the game until the process is done this would benefit some use cases greatly)