Methods for assisting mass ports to other software

[LethalDumpster]

I used the tool to get a bunch of pretty renders in blender, but I was also doing a bit of porting to UE4. Most efficient way for me to do that with multiple maps, would be to somehow get every mesh FBX dumped into a directory. And then UE4 only import what it hasnt before from the directory. The step above that is probably having a file with model names and transform data for each map.

If I could get such a model transform file from blender that points to the FBXs it dumped. Aswel as the FBXs pointing to their respective dumped textures. I would be able to use that file in UE4, to tell UE4 where to place everything after I import the dumps myself. This is actually very similar to some of the COD porting tools. It took a bit of manual work myself, but it accomplished just that

[lasa01]

I recommend you use glTF format to export scenes from Blender into other programs. It can export the whole scene with all objects in correct places, and it also supports lights and PBR materials (basically it contains what you described).

I downloaded Unreal Engine to test it myself. Blender includes a glTF addon, you just need to enable it in preferences. Lights need to be manually enabled in the export dialog. The export process is quite slow, exporting Mirage took over 30 minutes for me.

In Unreal Engine you need to enable the Datasmith glTF Importer plugin. The you can use the Datasmith button to import the scene.

It worked quite well, but all props with animations seem to be in the wrong place and way too small. Not sure if the problem is in Blender or Unreal Engine, but it might be possible to work around the problem inside Blender before exporting.

Edit: Looks like you can work around it by selecting all the prop meshes with armatures in Blender, doing "make single user: object & data", applying the armature modifiers and removing the parents while keeping the transformation. Then you can delete the old armatures and export as glTF. This will remove any animations in props but they are probably not that important and everything will be in the correct place and scale in Unreal Engine.

[lasa01]

Closing this since porting to other software is outside the scope of this project.