Typically, the closer your mesh is to the original surface, the more complex it will be - that is, it will contain more triangles, and those triangles will be smaller. Tessellation always implies sampling the original surface at some level of detail to create an approximation that allows the GPU to render the geometry more quickly. Tessellating a surface for real-time rendering involves an implicit tradeoff between the accuracy of the surface and the speed that it can be rendered.īy nature, a triangular mesh can never exactly match the mathematically precise surface it was generated from. The image on the right shows a wireframe of a triangular mesh that was generated for that surface. This process is called tessellation, and it is an essential step in preparing your CAD data for use in real time.įor example, the image on the left shows a surface rendered in a native CAD viewer. Real-time renderers and game engines like Unreal, which need to push the limits of these GPUs in order to produce dozens of stunning photoreal quality images every second, typically only work with geometry that is made up of triangular meshes.ĭatasmith bridges this gap by automatically computing triangular meshes that closely approximate any curved surfaces in your CAD file that don't already have mesh representations. However, modern GPU chips are highly optimized for rendering surfaces that are made up of triangular meshes. The precision and smoothness of these surfaces is ideal for the manufacturing process. In CAD formats, you often use curves and mathematical functions to define surfaces and solids. To read more about other types of Datasmith workflows, see Datasmith Supported Software and File Types. See Importing Datasmith Content into Unreal Engine 4. Use the Datasmith importer available in the Toolbar of the Unreal Editor to import your file.

Save your CAD scene to one of the supported file types.Įnable the Importers > Datasmith CAD Importer Plugin for your Project, if it's not already installed. If you're planning to use Datasmith to import scenes from CAD files into Unreal Editor, reading this page can help you understand how your scene is translated, and how you can work with the results in Unreal Editor.ĭatasmith uses a Direct workflow for most CAD file types. This means that to get your content into Unreal using Datasmith, you need to:

It follows the basic process outlined in the Datasmith Overview and About the Datasmith Import Process, but adds some special translation behavior that is specific to CAD files.

This page describes how Datasmith imports scenes from most supported CAD file formats into Unreal Editor.

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