Exporting from Blender to UE loses 'Blockiness'

Development Asset Creation
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1

So, I’m not sure if this is possible, but I’d really love to keep the blockiness of my models that are made in Blender. Every time I try importing a model from blender, this is how it turns out.

Original:

Imported:

Essentially, I want the imported version to at the very least not try to automatically round itself out, it looks so much worse than the original. This is a problem that’s plagued me ever since my first import, but generally speaking I’ve gotten around it most of the time. This time, though, if I can’t find a way to keep some similar form to the original, I have to scrap and remake the model. Right, I should say this is only a problem with skeletal meshes for me. Additionally, I have a hunch that this may be related to my export setting in Blender, but no amount of googling or experimenting has changed anything. Thanks for reading.

2

Best way to handle this I’ve found is to make use of the ‘edge split’ modifier in blender to explicitly write out the edge data on export.

In Blender:

-set your mesh to ‘smooth’
-add an edge split modifier and adjust the settings till you get something you are happy with
-export to fbx, be sure to tick the ‘apply modifiers’ checkbox

I like this method because it gives you more control over what edges get split. It’s often the case that you only want certain edges split.