I’m fairly new to Godot and I’m having difficulty finding the best method for importing my models for the workflow I use.
Many of the assets I have created are modular based and I utilize trim sheets for my texturing process. This means I keep most of my textures and materials separate from my models rather than importing a model with the textures embedded.
What I have found to work so far with my workflow is to import my fbx, and then create a new scene for my model so that I can actually apply my already imported materials to it. This seems to be fine, but now I have two different files for the same model. The fbx that was imported and the scene file that I will actually place into a level. That seems like a waste of space to basically have duplicates of every model that I have.
Through my searches on this topic, it seems many others have struggled with the importing process and what is the right way to do things.
I’m just interested in what others have done and what works best for them.
You don’t have to create a scene. An external material can be assigned at import. Double click the fbx, that will open the advanced import settings. In the top left chose materials, and select the material you want to replace. On the right you can enable “use external” and choose the material resource.
When you import the first model with your material, you want to reuse, you can export it from the mesh. In scene in the importer you can select on the right the material → extract (maybe once).
There is also “Actions” top left, from there you can extract the materials, too.
Then reimport your fbx model.
If you override the fbx it will be done automatically the next time. If you want more control, than there are also import scripts to do more complex tasks on import.