Send to Unreal - Send Selection to Unreal Operator

[gordon-vart]

• Addon: SendToUnreal
• Workflow: when you choose the option to submit to unreal, it would pop up a dialog box showing you a list of all of the meshes that will be sent. You should have the ability to check or uncheck each of the meshes to be included in the export. you should also have the ability to select all or select none.
• Description: Provide the ability to select one or more meshes that will be sent to unreal. It would really be a nice feature if you could only send the meshes that were selected in the editor to be exported. Currently, it sends all meshes even if they had not been changed. I currently store all of my meshes in a single blender file, and therefore I would like the ability to only send the mesh that I'm currently working on to Unreal. Alternatively, maybe there is some property that you could set on the mesh to include in the export? Essentially, it's a really slow process to export all of the meshes that you currently are not even working on when trying to test out the one that you are working on.

[james-baber]

Currently, besides the collection, you can use the visible state of objects within the collection to finely control which meshes are sent. Sending by selection has be brought up which we could add support for as another operator "send selection to unreal". Not sure when this would happen, but hiding the inverse of your selection might help you till this is a feature.

[gordon-vart]

Hey James. That is a beautiful option which I did not know existed. I definitely will try just hiding me objects that I don't want sent, that would be fantastic. I would definitely like to contribute to this project. I'm seasoned programmer, but I have not spent time in Python. Any recommendations for how I should try to get started maybe learning how to work on this plugin? until then, I will just keep contributing feature request.

[james-baber]

Awesome, yes PRs are welcome. This is our doc on how to contribute https://epicgames.github.io/BlenderTools/contributing/development.html

Running the unit tests locally will help you make sure your changes arent breaking existing feature that are currently being tested. Also if your new to writing python in blender I would just take a look at some examples in the their docs as well as all the examples that come loaded in the blender script editor and you can play with them till you understand how the api works. Also an IDE like pycharm helps alot to if your not using that already.

The code entry point for Send to Unreal starts inside a operator and all the code in functions module just is extra logic that flows from an operator. https://github.com/EpicGames/BlenderTools/blob/a0ceb2246185e7f0f93283ba272df82cbf102d81/send2ue/addon/operators.py#L8

There is also a giant property group that youll see in a alot of function params as properties this object gives you access to all the any of the send to unreal tool settings. https://github.com/EpicGames/BlenderTools/blob/master/send2ue/addon/properties.py

Currently I have some substantial changes in this branch that has alot of edits in various files. That I hope to merge in within the nexts week or so when I can get some free time. Just wanted to make you were aware of that, so it will be easier to merge. https://github.com/james-baber/BlenderTools/tree/feature-113

[namrog84]

@james-baber, I was considering doing a PR for this.

I was thinking of adding a 'checkbox' underneath "Paths" in the main

"Send selected only [X]"

Then it could be enabled/disabled for each of the 3 dropdown options. send2disk, send2disk&project, and send2project.

Would that sound alright? or have another suggestion?

[jamesbaber1]

Hi @namrog84, sorry for the slow response. I think having a seperate operator for sending selection only would be a good approach. So adding a "Push Only Selected Assets" menu item under Pipeline > Export that users could map to a seperate hot key if they want.