Instancing?

[RobertMtx]

I apologize if this is not the correct way to request a new feature. Something that would really assist developers would be instancing support (in Blender, Alt+D drag to instance a copy of something). It would be amazing if there were support to import these instanced copies as just that - instanced copies. These copies would technically just represent a transform. Then once imported, the actual mesh object would be instanced multiple times and placed in these transform locations.

I haven't played around with the python scripting parts of this, so I'm not sure if something like this is currently possible through that interface.

Thanks for such a useful add-on!

[xavier150]

Hey RobertMtx,
I have trouble understanding the usefulness, In Unreal the model will import in the same way as a raw mesh, them you can place the model in level many times as instancing

[RobertMtx]

I was referring to instancing the mesh inside of individual objects. Such as a chair leg that gets copied 4 times for a chair (one that might get broken apart in the game). If the exporter kept track of the transforms for the 3 copies, the importer may be able to instance the leg in all 4 locations. But I'm very new to Unreal, so I may have misunderstood how things work during import. I think you would have to create a prefab or simple actor class in order to use a static mesh in more than one place for a single object. Apologies for confusion.

Anyway, this would be a useful feature if you can find a way to pull it off without a lot of hassle. There are many objects that have several copies of certain components. If those components are complex in any way, having instances instead of copies would be useful.

[xavier150]

Oh I understand It is possible to create BluePrint in Unreal and assemble the imported objects instanced or not with a generated script. I noted but it's not a priority