Blender Datasmith Export

Export your Blender scene to UE4 using the Datasmith format.

It aims to export all the Datasmith format supports. For now it exports:

• Meshes with normals, vertex colors and up to 8 UV channels.
• Hierarchy is exported keeping meshes references, transforms, parents and per-instance material overrides from blender.
• Textures and materials are exported using data from the shader graphs. Materials are closely approximated and a good amount of nodes are supported (math, mix, fresnel, vertex color and others)
• Cameras are exported trying to match Blender data, keeping focus distance, focal length, and aperture
• Lights are exported, keeping their type, power, color and size data.
• Reflection probes including Planar, Sphere and Box captures.

Check out an overview of a previous version here: https://youtu.be/bUUDqerdqAc

Sample:

You can click the images to open a large preview.

Blender Eevee:

UE4 using Datasmith:

This result relies on the DatasmithBlenderContent, which is a UE4 Plugin that improves material import compatibility. Consider supporting the project by purchasing it from here (Epic Games store support will be added later)

This result is in a custom UE4 build, which fixes some issues of the UE4 importer. If you are technical to compile the engine, you can check the fork here. Hopefully we can get to integrate our fixes into the main branch.

Installation:

Now Download the latest development version and install from the Blender addons preferences pane.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: Does this support weighted normals/smoothing groups?

A: Yes, but the plugin is unable to triangulate correctly. For the time being, you can add a Triangulate modifier with the Keep Normals option to work around this.

Q: Why are some material nodes not exported?

A: Most of the nodes are exported, but not all of them are imported from the UE4 side. The Datasmith Blender Additions (mentioned above) improves this by adding implementations for some of these nodes. There is a list of nodes in the wiki with more information on which nodes are supported, and which require the UE4 plugin to work.

Q: What is this "custom build" you talked about earlier?

A: I modified some of the UE4 build to fix a couple of errors when importing the scenes generated from Blender. These are related to normal maps import and very specific import issues with lights. If you're interested you can check this custom build discussion.

If you want to support the project, consider supporting via Patreon.

Please please, join the project Discord and share your results! I want to see what you make and I am open to any feedback you have.