From 3Ds Max to Unreal Engine 5 by Amer Sawalha

If your first import into Unreal Engine 5 looked broken – wrong scale, black materials, messed up pivots – this course fixes that. You will learn how to prep a 3ds Max scene properly, then move it over with FBX and Datasmith without the usual headaches.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Prep a 3ds Max scene for export: units, layers, pivots, and mesh cleanup
• Build and organize V-Ray / Corona materials so they survive the move to Unreal
• Fix normals, smoothing, Material IDs, and UVW maps before export
• Export with FBX and Datasmith and update files without breaking the project
• Navigate Unreal Engine 5 UI and import scenes from 3ds Max, SketchUp and Revit

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic computer skills, no prior Unreal Engine 5 experience needed
• Tools: 3ds Max, Unreal Engine 5, V-Ray or Corona renderer
• Hardware: Windows PC capable of running Unreal Engine 5, dedicated GPU with DirectX 12 support, 16GB+ RAM recommended

📝 Description

This is a short, practical bridge course. It does not try to teach you all of Max or all of Unreal. It covers that messy middle part nobody explains well: how to get a model out of one and into the other without losing a day to fixes.

You start in 3ds Max with the basics that actually matter for export – units setup, layer organization, and navigation. Then you get into the stuff that breaks imports: dense meshes, bad pivots, flipped normals, missing UVW maps, and sloppy material setups. Amer walks through each one with a real case study, so you see what to fix and what to leave alone.

The second half is all Unreal Engine 5. You will download and set it up, learn the UI and viewport controls, then import the same project two ways: classic FBX and Datasmith. You will also see how the workflow changes when the source file comes from SketchUp or Revit, which is super useful if you work in archviz and get files from different people. By the end you have a repeatable checklist for scale, materials, and file updates.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• 3ds Max beginners who want to move into real-time
• Unreal Engine 5 beginners coming from offline rendering
• 3D artists building portfolio pieces for archviz or games
• Architects and interior designers who need to present in Unreal

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Amer Sawalha works as a 3D instructor focused on the 3ds Max to Unreal Engine 5 workflow for architecture and interiors. He teaches the export standards studios actually use – clean units, organized Material IDs, and reliable Datasmith pipelines. His classes are built for beginners who want usable, job-ready habits instead of theory.

🏁 Final Result

• A cleaned and organized 3ds Max architectural scene ready for real-time, imported into Unreal Engine 5 via both FBX and Datasmith with correct scale, pivots, UVs, and materials.