Why can't the collision of a static mesh be copied to the content browser as its own asset?

I have a skeletal mesh that I imported without any collision. Now I want to set this up to be used in a pawn-derived pseudocharacter class that does not use capsule as its root component for movement and navigation. So to create collision I opened the persona editor and picked the idle pose, then exported (exported to content browser, not out of unreal) a static mesh. From the static mesh, I created a convex hull to use as the collision.

But I found that there is no way to export (again, into content browser, not out of unreal) or copy out this collision into the content browser as a ushapecomponent or anything, so it means that this workflow basically is impossible even though IMHO it is very efficient, intuitive, and easy. So I am wondering why this capability wasn’t included in the editor.

It is very frustrating to not be able to use my own problem solving and reasoning abilities to intuitively work within the editor because so many capabilities are missing.

from the sound of what your attempting to do it makes no sense. you want to create your own version of the character class ok thats cool and i cant totally agree with that. you want to import a skeletal mesh with no collision then export it, and re-import to use as collision, this is the bit that makes zero sense. if you want collision based on the shape of the sk mesh then either use custom collision when you import the mesh (good for if you want less polys on the collision) or change the collision complexity to “use complex as simple” which will basically use the polys of the mesh as collision. the way you were attempting would basically be impossible to ever get the collision to line up well with the animations. theres probably many other solutions to this as well be i described the most basic.

Well the basic problem I am trying to solve is creating a character which has a skeletal mesh shaped like a spider. Therefore using the capsule collider as the parent doesn’t make sense because the character is not humanoid shaped. Since that can’t be changed within the character class I need to recreate the character class from the pawn class. For navigation and some collision applications (physics) I still need to have a collision mesh (which are of type ushapecomponent). Using complex as simple does NOT work for physics, it says so right on the tooltip.

If you don’t recommend recreating a character type class from scratch then how would you propose overcoming the problem of being limited to a capsule shaped collider for non-humanoid characters?

Also, just to make my question clear, why can’t collision be a separate asset? Why can’t the editor treat it as a separate asset?

i was agreeing on the recreating the character, limiting the collision to a sphere has some negative aspects. i dont know if its possible to have a separate collision object as its own item but its really not the best way to go about it imo, youd be much better served to have custom collision or create a separate basic shaped mesh as collision. if you have a copy of the skeletal mesh as a separate object you will need to have it animated and synced exactly to the actual mesh, on the other hand if you use a custom collision built in the skeletal mesh then it should be animated and work out of the box. so take your mesh and export it to a modeling software then duplicate it and name the duplicate as you would for custom collision (UCX_*****). then when you re-import to unreal you will have simple collision that is the exact same shape as the visible mesh. of course im paraphrasing the steps here but its much simpler implementation that what your attempting to do.