How to Cleanup Mesh in Unreal Engine

This guide is part of the RapidPipeline 3D Plugin Actions Knowledge Base. It shows how to Cleanup Mesh on Unreal Engine; if you'd like to know more about it, please check out the following links:

• Learn more about the Cleanup Mesh
• Learn more about Unreal Engine

1. Select the faulty meshes by clicking on them in the Viewport, or do not select anything (all the scene will be processed).
2. Inside the plugin window, choose the action Clean Up Mesh.
3. Enable Fix Winding Order in the action´s settings.
4. Press the Run button. These settings are optimal for this model, as it has wrong winding order. For other models with faulty mesh normals, the setting Fix Winding Order will not be needed. In that case, simple use Recompute Input Normals. The angle at which recomputed normals will be considered “hard” is controlled with the Normal Hard Angle Threshold setting.

• Use the Unreal Engine plugin
• Select mesh(es) to process
• Choose an action and adjust settings
• Run the process
• Examine the results

This tutorial shows how use the RapidPipeline Processor plugin in Unreal Engine to clean up model´s geometry and fix issues with the mesh. This will guide you through the use of the action Clean Up Mesh with a CAD model that has faulty normals/winding order.

See below an overview of the performed fixes during this tutorial: the normals and winding order of the mesh, wrong in the original file, have been fixed in the output.

The example asset in this tutorial is based on 'Gusto - electric sports car concept' by Mikko Hörkkö, sourced from GrabCAD.

Input with wrong Winding Order.

Output with correct Winding Order.

The Clean Up Mesh action opened in the plugin.

These settings are optimal for this model, as it has wrong winding order. For other models with faulty mesh normals, the setting Fix Winding Order will not be needed. In that case, simple use Recompute Input Normals. The angle at which recomputed normals will be considered “hard” is controlled with the Normal Hard Angle Threshold setting.

To inspect the winding order fix in Unreal Engine, select the option Normals from the Mesh Components section in the Show dropdown (eye icon). You’ll see small lines representing vertex normals and tangents on the mesh surface. You can follow the same steps for the input and the output model to examine the winding order fix closely.

The ”Show” dropdown.

The ”Normals” option within the ”Show” dropdown.

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