This is a fork of the original Blender Datasmith Export Plugin by Andrés Botero, updated and maintained for current Blender and Unreal Engine versions.
Current release: 1.3.0 — targets Blender 5.2 LTS and Unreal Engine 5.6/5.7. Blender 4.x compatibility is no longer a goal.
"Only keyed objects animate" (new export option, on by default): animation is exported only for objects that have their own keyframes. Objects moved solely by an animated parent follow it via actor attachment in Unreal instead of getting a duplicate baked clip, and empty leftover animation clips are skipped. This avoids the common case where every child of an animated "mover" object ends up with its own redundant animation track. Export with the playhead on the rest frame (e.g. door closed at frame 0). Disable the option for the previous bake-everything behavior.
Internal code cleanup with no change to export output (verified byte-identical against the previous version on test scenes). See CHANGELOG.md.
Collection hierarchy export (new option "Collections as tags/layers", on by default): each actor is tagged with its Blender collection path (col:<filename>/<collection>/<subcollection>, one tag per level). The tags are runtime-readable in Unreal (GetAllActorsWithTag) — show/hide a whole collection branch with one query, e.g. for product configurators. Includes an optional UE companion script that converts the tags into nested Runtime Data Layers. See CHANGELOG.md.
Blender 5.2 support and Datasmith format fixes validated against Unreal's reader source (DatasmithSceneXmlReader.cpp): Principled BSDF socket renames (specular/transmission/emission), the modern Mix and Combine/Separate Color nodes, renamed light-probe types, faster mesh export, correct format version (no import warning), correct hidden-object visibility, and proper XML escaping. See CHANGELOG.md for the full list.
- Ported to Blender 4.5 / Unreal Engine 5.6 (version 1.0.3 era fixes).
- Download the latest release zip from the releases page.
- Open Blender and go to
Edit > Preferences > Add-ons, open the dropdown at the top right and chooseInstall from Disk.... - Select the downloaded zip file.
- Enable the add-on by checking the box next to
Unreal Datasmith format.
- Open Blender and create or import a scene that you want to export to Unreal Engine.
- Go to
File > Export > Datasmith (.udatasmith). - Choose the location and name for the exported file and click
Export Datasmith. - In Unreal Engine, import the
.udatasmithfile via the Datasmith importer.
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Selected objects only | off | Export only selected objects (parents are kept as empty actors to preserve hierarchy). |
| Export animations | on | Export object transform animations as a Level Sequence. |
| Only keyed objects animate | on | Export animation only for objects with their own keyframes; parented parts follow via attachment in Unreal, and empty clips are skipped. Off = bake world motion for every moving object. |
| Apply modifiers | on | Apply geometry modifiers on export (may break mesh instancing). |
| Skip meshes and textures | off | Faster re-export when only transforms/shaders changed. |
| Use sRGB gamma hack (UE 4.24 and below) | off | Legacy sRGB workaround for old Unreal versions. |
| Compatibility mode | off | Improves material-node support without the UE-side plugin, at reduced quality. |
| Collections as tags/layers | on | Write each object's collection hierarchy as actor tags and layer (see above). |
| Write metadata | on | Export object/mesh custom properties as Datasmith metadata. |
| Enable logging / profiling | off | Diagnostics; logging writes a .log next to the output. |
Tested with Blender 5.2.0 LTS and validated against the Unreal Engine 5.6/5.7 Datasmith importer. If you encounter any issues, please report them on the issues page.
Original plugin by Andrés Botero. For background on the original project, refer to https://github.com/0xafbf/blender-datasmith-export