I’m trying to export a FBX with simple animation (a purchased 3D printer animation) to UE4.
I’m unable to import it as a single object (mesh) with animation. If animation import is enabled, UE4 imports 60 objects and I have to add all of those into the scene. I know there’s a “combine meshes” option on FBX import, but that’s for static meshes only.
That wouldn’t be so bad, but I want to add an array so there are many of these in the scene at the same time. The array blueprint accepts only a single mesh actor. I tried Merging actors but only got “insufficient mesh components for merging”.
I have some experience with the Unreal Engine but not that much so take the following with a grain of salt.
AFAIK there is no way to do this at least without plugins.
Unless your printer can be imported as skeletal mesh you will either have to assemble it from its pieces in a Blueprint or you can import it with:
File → import into level
That way at least the hierarchy will be preserved but AFAIK the animation will be lost.
For things like a 3d printer I would combine all static objects into a single object in Blender and then im import it to unreal.
After that import the moving parts separately and build the rig from scratch in Unreal. That way you have maximum control over it.
Or perhaps you could export the moving parts as skeletal mesh. That way you could use animations from Blender.
Or - if possible - export the moving part as alembic squence. That way you have little control over the animations in Unreal and I don’t think it is very performant but it is probably the fastest way to get it to work in Unreal.
Do you mean a variable in a blueprint set to array? If that is what you mean, then you have to assemble your printer as a blueprint actor for example BP_3DPrinter. Then in a different blueprint you can create a variable of the blueprint class BP_3DPrinter and set it to array.
You should probably ask in the Unreal forums because they probably know better than on a Blender forum.
If you find a better way I would be very interested.
hey, necroing because i found this via google, the solution is to group your meshes under a single root node - from maya you can just group all meshes with ctrl+g, blender should have something similar?
if there is a single root then unreal will import multiple separate meshes as a single skeletal mesh.
cheers to anyone in the future who finds this the same way i did!