RuntimeMeshLoader
A pluging for Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5, which allows to import meshes during runtime.
This is a fork of the original RuntimeMeshLoader repository.
Additionally, functiones were added to import and apply textures for the meshes.
RuntimeMeshLoader (RML) uses Assimp as a third-party library to handle most of the import-stuff.
Table of contents
Supported operating systems
Currently, Windows (x64) as well as Linux (Ubuntu 20) have been verified.
Supported Unreal Enginge versions
The Plugin was tested under Unreal Engine v. 4.25.3 as well as version 5 (Early Access). However, any modern version of Unreal Engine should be compatible with it.
Installation
Download this repository, by clicking on the green Code-Button in the upper right hand corner and select Download ZIP.
In your Unreal Enginge project open the Plugins directory. If it does not exist, simply create a new folder in the root directory of your project and call it Plugins.
Copy the contents of the former downloaded ZIP-folder into it. The folder might have a name such as RuntimeMeshLoader-main. If that is the case, rename it to RuntimeMeshLoader.
Afterwards, load up your project. Unreal Enginge might tell you it needs to rebuild the Plugin. Simply click on Yes. After the rebuild process your project should load as usual.
In your projec's source panel you should now have a folder labeled RuntimeMeshLoader Content. Inside you will find an example map, which will show you how to use the plugin with an example.
How-to
The plugin can be used in many ways. You could create a file-dialogue for the user to select his assets to be loaded, or by loading assets from a pre-defined folder, or any other creative way.
In the example map, a folder called RuntimeMeshLoader is created in the user's Documents folder. Inside this folder, the plugin expects for each asset to be loaded a separate folder, in which 3 files should be located. <folder name>.fbx, <folder name>_T.png and <folder name>_N.png, which are the mesh itself as an fbx-file, its texture and its normal map as PNG-files.
If you load up the plugin for the first time, the folder will be empty. As an example, you can copy the two provided mesh-folders inside the Resources directory into the aforementioned RuntimeMeshLoader-folder.
Limitations
Only PNG-formats can be loaded. JPG is currently not supported.
In the example map, only fbx-files are supported. However, the plugin is already capable of laoding a lot more 3D-file formats.
I often run into problems with loading fbx-files downloaded from the internet. Usually, opening it up in Blender and exporting it again solved it for me.