Several materials on a mesh from Cinema4D (C4D)

Development Asset Creation
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Hi together, hope somebody can help me. I have a problem that a lof Cinema4D users maybe have. It was already described here but solution does not work.

I try to import a mesh from C4D so that I have at least 2 diffrent elements for materials in unreal. I made individuall polygon selections on a mesh in C4d. I named the poly selections 1 and 2 and put the material on it. I made for both an UVW map (if I do not, it doesn’t change anything). I tried the export with C4D R12 (only FBX12 support) and C4D R16 (full functional Demo) in FBX13. But when import it I just get one element (Element 0) on the Mesh. Is there a possibility to get meshes into unreal from cinema with more then only 1 Element for materials? (Btw: I do not want to bake the materials on the mesh in C4D)

Secondary problem: I get smooth and “rounded” meshes only with the FBX12 export from C4D R12.

[here a picture of my object in C4D][1]

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Hi Sven,

The smoothing issue is known and has been reported to Maxon with C4D. This is not related to UE4.

You can read about that issue in this post for more information.

I’ve personally not used C4D before so all I can do is suggest a video that appears to get the result you want with the multiple materials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvTHcBBgBCk

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Hi Tim,

thanks for the answer. But the link for the multiple materials is not really helpfull. It only shows how to make poly selections in Cinema4D. I think everyone who is not a real beginner with Cinema4D knows that. The problem is that this selcections will not be importet in the Unreal Egine4 and the entire mesh is only one element for only one material in Unreal. So unfortunately this problem is not really solved.

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Sorry about that. I skimmed the video and thought it may help. :confused:

As for the Smoothing issue that’s the one I have had more experience testing. Hopefully someone with more knowledge about C4D can help with an answer.

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Have had same problems on and off with different versions of the exporter and different versions of C4D.
Plus the usual smoothing groups problems.

Workaround for the material slots: Copy your mesh , make polygon selection , invert selection , delete polygons , so each polygon selection is a seperate mesh , export as fbx. Unreal makes a single mesh again when importing with a material slot for each of the meshes you’ve exported.

As for the smoothing part: Use a Cinema4D version where the smoothing exporting is F…d up (like R16) if you want flat shading.(PS R16 does the UVW tags correctly in my experience)
For smooth shading use a version wich doesn’t F…up the smoothing (like R17 or one of older ones)
UE4 will still say it did not find smoothing group but there is a diffrence in how it will render the mesh.

Problems solved ? Hope it helps.