[FBX Import] Can you specify a project wide material and texture lookup?

Hi there,

As a game developer, I try to keep my content folder structure as clean as I can.
I like to have a folder structure that includes folders like Materials, Textures, Meshes, etc.

I’ve set the auto reimport setting to automatically import my textures and meshes on change.
This works all fine, textures and models are changed on the fly.

There is one problem however, if I want to import a new FBX file. Even if I already created a material for it, with the same name as the FBX in my maya scene, it will still create a new material if the checker import materials is checked.
If I don’t check it, it will not aply a material at all.
Futher more, If I automatically create materials, it will also import the textures. These texture references however, are not referenced to my source texture.
So If I update my texture, these imported textures won’t be updated as well.

So I was wondering, is it possible to tell unreal that your textures are in folder X and your materials are in folder Y, and that it should always look in those folders. Or, maybe even look project wide for a specific material / texture name.

Thanks in advanced,

Ron Kamphuis

Indeed, this would be nice. I am not saying the current workflow for import and handling assets is not good at all…but it should get some more love instead of featuring another ambient occlusion feature, etc.

I already know certain people who jumped off the stage and switched to Unity5 because of its native 3dsmax support and some other features like: Your content browser is your current folder structure, something that bugs me since i switched from Unity to UE4. :-/ I love UE4, but there are things i don’t understand as an 3d artist, especially when it comes to proper import functionality and keeping things simple between the current work in our native 3d applications and UE4 itself. Maybe its our fault, not using a proper workflow…