Hello Everyone,
I have a whole “map/level” designed in Blender including structures and assets which mainly will be static meshes in unreal and can’t quite figure out how to set it up in Blender and export it properly to Unreal Engine. I found a Blender->UE export plugin which leaves the origins at the center of the assets which is already a huge help as I don’t have to move every asset to 0,0,0 before exporting, even some materials are getting exported quite well when I import them in UE. Still some stay just white.
At the moment I first export the whole scene without the plugin and import them in UE as single mesh. Add it to the scene to get an overview of the arrangement. Then I export from Blender the Assets with the plugin which saves all assets as separate fbx files and import them into a seperate folder in UE4 and add the single meshes into the scene one by one and drag them to the location where they should be regarding the import of the whole map. This can get quite tiring depending on how big your scene is and how many scenes you’re going to transfer from blender to UE. The in Blender created UVs are being exported properly. The origins are where they are set in Blender. But is there a better way, especially also regarding LODs? Haven’t quite made LODs yet for my meshes, not sure if the plugin understands /supports them, but haven’t really looked into this yet…
Addon: https://www.blendernation.com/2018/09/16/add-on-blender-for-unreal-engine/
What’s great about the plugin, I hardly get any warnings regarding topology/normals anymore!
Secondly I have assets that are actually based on several standalone meshes due to easy material associations. But is this really a good way to go? Maybe I should join the meshes inside Blender first and assign materials to the various parts so I at least have the material slots in UE available even though the material might not get exported properly. Or should I export every mesh piece which makes a complete object by it’s own? In that case: should I just create blueprints for example for a house which is made of meshes for doors, windows, house itself, etc, etc and combine the meshes inside the BP? or should I join these meshes beforehand and still be able to assign various materials to specific parts of the house even though it’s one mesh?
Where should I set up materials? In blender already and find a better way to export them without getting broken on import? Or shall I design them in UE later on? The export in Blender and import in UE often gives me just materials that are white instead of having my textures or colors I defined in Blender (haven’t tested 2.8 yet). I mean substance designer sounds interesting and I will give it a go for sure, but it’s not the time yet as I have to much to learn besides that and the costs are not worth it yet.
So what would be the best way to design, set up and export assets/environments in Blender (and what assets would you create in Blender, what assets elsewhere. I for sure do the landscaping in UE of course) and their respective materials and how would you export and import them from Blender to UE so they actually can be used in the most efficient way in UE afterwards and still look as much as possible as designed in Blender. That would really interest me, I played around a lot but can’t figure out if there’s a better way of doing things 
There’s a thread on datasmiths website/forum that asks about the implementation of Blender for Datasmith, but it’s not really visible if they are going to do it or not. A lot of ppl are of course interested but they state that there’s someone else doing something like that, but if he finishes this actually or not is a bit unclear.
If you know about any valuable resources or could give me some hints/explanations on this topic would be so much appreciated <3
Thanks a lot for taking the time to read this
All the best to you all!
Oli