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Basic Import of 3D Model?

Basic Import of 3D Model?

Postby monkeyfrogstudio » 24 May 2020, 19:12

Hello. I don't get a lot of time at the moment, but what's the basic way to import a 3D model, with textures/materials, into Skyline? I don't see any documentation for this (since there is very little by way of documentation currently) and I didn't see the topic in one of the tutorial videos (though I might have missed it).

Any help would be appreciated.
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Re: Basic Import of 3D Model?

Postby SolarPortal » 24 May 2020, 20:50

Sure, its easy:
  • Copy your asset into the asset library or other library of your choice that you added through Editor Settings.
  • Next open the asset manager > Find folder in library.
  • "Click on folder(if it has assets skyline recognised, it auto adds to resources)" or "right click > ResourceManagement > add folder to resources".
  • Click the drill icon in the right of the toolbar, set settings (defaults are fine for fbx), then wait for the mesh to be generated. This is a batch convert for the whole folder. (You can also right click on each asset and context menus change to what type of asset is selected.)
  • Drag mesh to scene, it should load its materials by default. If your lucky and named textures like texture_D.png, texture_N.png, texture_S.png,then the normal and spec map(depreciated in v2 as we have a metallic workflow) can be auto loaded. Otherwise only the albedo texture will be added.
  • Select entity in scene, then use material editor to load other textures and set material accordingly. Save material to keep changes

Alternatively, you can drag the FBX from asset manager to scene and it will convert to mesh automatically for the dragged model. And i also believe it worked directly from explorer, but you have to add the folder to resources otherwise it will not work from a local group and instead pull from the global group.

Adding resources to the lists is so the folder paths are cut into resource group paths.
e.g.. "Asset Libary/Models/".
This is used to indicate a group to skyline, so it knows that mymesh.mesh comes from that location rather than...Libary/Misc...
There are 3 group systems in skyline.
  • Local Groups: When an asset loads from this group, it will search for assets in this folder first like textures, data files etc.. It allows the duplication of asset names in a Content Library. So if each folder like done above is added to resources, it allows names such as mesh.mesh or model.mesh which you might have another 100 of those names in different libraries. This is the correct way to work with skyline.
    For this to work though a content library like the "Asset LIbrary" folder have to be used and generates a resource list of all contents inside the directory, essentially a cache of file names and file paths.
    Global Group: The global group is the absolute fallback of the resource system in where the first reference of that asset found in any library is returned, as it auto scans for it. This group technique allows files to be loaded from outside of the Content Libraries and supports the loading from windows explorer instead of the asset manager. Again this is not recommended simply due to the fact that the asset manager is a far better tool for managing all assets, but it ony, shows filetypes that skyline can accept.
  • Temporary Groups: These are part of the global group, but essentially the next time you load skyline, it wont have the resource group anymore. Useful for skimming folders when looking through other hard drives.

A Content Library can be placed on any hard drive and creates a fast unique way of working with an engine simply due to the fact that you are not limited to placing assets in a project folder and the more projects you have, you end up duplicating the assets over and over. Skyline's content libaries allow a consolidated area to store assets and they can be used from the same location between scenes.
Beware, that changing a material that is used in multiple scenes will change everywhere. Duplicate the material to store a different set of properties for rendering. e.g. blue ork, green ork..
PBR is used because it allows the material to look the equivalent in any lighting because of the nature of the property sets regardless of the scenes lighting, reflections etc...

Hope this gives some insight into the skyline asset system.
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