Usage of model colliders and glTF format is confusing

[mdgunn]

Not a huge issue but I did waste a few hours with what seems to be a bit of a messy situation with information around colliders so I wanted to point this out while I have this information to hand rather than forget to raise it at a more appropriate phase of development,

In Discord I eventually found this message which I take to be still correct now and presumably into the future.

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Josh — 22/07/2024 16:47

Colliders will only get saved in our MDL format. glTF does not support them

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The messiness around this is as follows (I was on 0.98 - I cant load the hottest beta currently):

1) The UI allows you to change collider settings on gltf files but the changes will not be saved so should not allow you to start changing them.

2) There is some fairly prominent information on main blog (https://www.ultraengine.com/community/blogs/entry/2820-colliders-in-ultra-engine/)  that DID seem to indicate colliders would save with gltf so its unfortunate that this info is more prominent than the information I eventually found in Discord. The main article should probably be corrected with a note rather hope users find something in comments of hidden in discord.

3) The UI does not notify the user that MDL should be used or suggest a conversion at any time.

4) The FPS template provides objects in gltf format along with .collider files making it seem like it is the correct way to do things.  Objects are not in MDL format.

5) The docs suggest you use glTF but do not cover colliders yet and does not suggest or even mention MDL format (https://www.ultraengine.com/learn/modeling). 

I am sure this will all be fixed later but there are a few loose ends out there so I just wanted to point this out a bit in case only 1 or 2 of these avenues were appreciated as being a possible area of confusion for future users.

If I have misunderstood the situation with colliders I apologise and please point me to the correct information.

 

[Josh]

Thanks, I am sorry you lost some time figuring that out.

Originally Ultra was going to just use glTF as its main file format. However, it became clear over time that a proprietary custom format would be better suited.

Colliders were originally a separate file, but now they are part of our custom file format.

[Josh]

I added a prompt when another model format is saved and a collider is present.

[Josh]

Also added a note at the top of that blog article.