XeroPhane
11-26-2011, 04:03 AM
I’ve nearly finished establishing a proper FBX to UDK (Unreal Development Kit) pipeline that allows us to effectively assign materials, behaviors, etc but I have one last hitch: asset naming.
The problem is when importing FBX into UDK, you have a couple of options:
1) Isolate common objects (i.e., interior walls) in authoring software and export to FBX; in UDK select combine meshes. However, with many shapes and configurations, the collision and texture application is… unreliable, leaving me to have to recreate the meshes inside of UDK. That more or less kills any work done in the original authoring software.
2) Import every object independently, place one by one into UDK. I’ve written a little app that places the objects as they were in the original software and works reliably except most of the object names created by the FBX exporter contain characters illegal inside of UDK (e.g., Wall Generic - 8” [123456]). On simpler imports, I was able to rename each asset individually, which amounted to ~20-30 objects, and then use my app to place, rotate, scale, set basic lighting parameters, etc all at once very successfully. But with larger models (complete buildings typically), the amount of objects is entirely too many to want to rename all of them manually.
Is there a batch asset rename of some sort, a way to get into the gameassetdatabase or similar to rename the assets en masse? Or possibly a way to control how assets are named @ import? Otherwise, with option 2 (which is the preferred option... a means to an end, which I will eventually combine groups into single meshes later to limit objects loaded into a level at a time) I would need to rename each and every (i.e. hundreds... thousands) asset one by one. That's not very time-effective.
I should maybe mentioned I've researched this like crazy, had many trials and errors without avail, evenings and weekends lost for the past 2 weeks... I finally had to convince myself to beg for help.
Thanks
The problem is when importing FBX into UDK, you have a couple of options:
1) Isolate common objects (i.e., interior walls) in authoring software and export to FBX; in UDK select combine meshes. However, with many shapes and configurations, the collision and texture application is… unreliable, leaving me to have to recreate the meshes inside of UDK. That more or less kills any work done in the original authoring software.
2) Import every object independently, place one by one into UDK. I’ve written a little app that places the objects as they were in the original software and works reliably except most of the object names created by the FBX exporter contain characters illegal inside of UDK (e.g., Wall Generic - 8” [123456]). On simpler imports, I was able to rename each asset individually, which amounted to ~20-30 objects, and then use my app to place, rotate, scale, set basic lighting parameters, etc all at once very successfully. But with larger models (complete buildings typically), the amount of objects is entirely too many to want to rename all of them manually.
Is there a batch asset rename of some sort, a way to get into the gameassetdatabase or similar to rename the assets en masse? Or possibly a way to control how assets are named @ import? Otherwise, with option 2 (which is the preferred option... a means to an end, which I will eventually combine groups into single meshes later to limit objects loaded into a level at a time) I would need to rename each and every (i.e. hundreds... thousands) asset one by one. That's not very time-effective.
I should maybe mentioned I've researched this like crazy, had many trials and errors without avail, evenings and weekends lost for the past 2 weeks... I finally had to convince myself to beg for help.
Thanks