Known issues - Troubleshooting

Since v2.14, a new BAT workflow is available for mesh particles.
Unreal Engine’s .fbx file import pipeline differs from PopcornFX Editor’s, meaning skeletons will not be imported the same way. If you generated a BAT in PopcornFX Editor from a newly created animated mesh, there’s a good chance importing that effect will produce bugged animations.
A quick fix (until we adopt a better solution) is to import the animated .fbx file in UE: this should create new Skeletal mesh, Skeleton and Animation assets.
Once this is done, re-export the Skeletal Mesh and Animations individually into your source PopcornFX project from UE’s content browser.
Re-generating BATs in PopcornFX Editor and re-importing your effect & BATs in Unreal will fix the bugged animations.
Note: This issue is due to the way UE imports and optimizes skeletons imported from .fbx files while PopcornFX Editor does not, leading to different skeletons in PopcornFX Editor vs UE.

PopcornFX Editor imports sub meshes as they appear in the .fbx files. As for levels of detail, there are two options. First "HierarchyBasedLODs" where the LOD level is chosen depending on the order of the "LODGroup" children in the file hierarchy, and "NameBasedLODs" where the LOD level is chosen depending on the suffix of the sub mesh names: "_LOD0", "_LOD1" etc…​

On the other hand, Unreal Engine’s .fbx import pipeline will rearrange sub meshes (called sections) on a per-material basis. This means sub meshes with the same material will get merged and sub meshes with multiple materials will get split. Depending on how your mesh is structured, there may be no way to auto-import its levels of detail and sub meshes into UE. In that case, the best method is to export each LOD separately, import the first one into the content browser, then add each level one by one in the mesh viewer ("LOD Settings" > "LOD Import").

If importing an effect in UE using the Mesh Atlas or LOD feature yeilds different results compared to the PopcornFX Editor (meshes not rendering, all sub meshes rendering at once instead of individually, etc.):