Hard, but not impossible. Inferred lighting is a technique used to get around this problem for a while. There are performance trade-offs (as there always are) but it works quite well in every implementation I’ve seen.
Well, there is Erwin’s GameKit code… 
Epic Games, Crytek, Unity Technology and Blender Foundation could sit around a table and define an open format like Alembic to cater for the needs of what is nowadays handled by FBX.
Indeed, it’s not impossible. And they already working on a solution (They said that on Twitch a couple of days ago).
It could also be possible, that some clever guys implement something like Inferred rendering by themselves, thanks to the source.
At the moment it’s definitely a pain. But the great things that UE4 offers outweighing such issues.
Or one of them could simply make a project that works for them, stick an MIT/BSD license on the project, then let the others participate. It is rare in the open-source world that these things come from a committee meeting.
Hell, think of what such a library could mean for a Open Game project. You think people wouldn’t sit up and take notice if the Blender Foundation were to write a game format that can be freely used in major game engines… and just so happens to make Blender a viable alternative to the commercial 3D software suites? 
Say what you will about the license, but that is a beautiful code base. I’ve just started looking at it, but wow everything is so well organized and pretty. And not so much as a single warning when compiling 
About export formats (forgive my ignorance on this subject): Blender has a .psk/.psa export plugin for skeletal mesh/animation data. Could this be used in place of the “reverse-engineered” FBX export to get assets into UE?
I know, right? I was expecting a dog’s breakfast given all the disclaimers about being early code & still under development, but I’ll be damned if it’s not top notch to start with
psk/psa support was removed from Unreal Engine 4. It’s a fbx only pipeline now.
Nope, PSK/PSA is entirely different and is not longer supported by Epic/UE4.
Hehe, @David_Hattori, beat me to it 
PSK/PSA isnt support as stated above in UE4, But like with any good hacker that finds issues there are always work arounds. Lets say for example exporting your animated mesh in PSk/PSA format into the UE3 editor and then exporting out the same asset in .FBX format from UE3, running through the autodesk fbx converter tool and then importing into UE4. 
Same here. Painless setup and not a single warning during compile. :yes:
I wonder if anyone has thought about developing a live asset pipeline? Maybe a network interface between Blender and the editor. Connect Blender to the UE4 editor, export the asset over, then should you make changes to the asset in Blender, you can hit an update button and the changes propagate to the asset in the editor. Painless tweaking. No intermediate files.
Enjoy people who need it
Hey guys
another mention of blender in another video of unreal developers:
they added support for .obj and collada i believe, and they’re saying the best way to improve the integration would be to send them assets that are problematic so they can debug them. i’m invested in unreal engine 4 and it would be cool if the community makes an effort in this area
So what’s the status of Blender > FBX > UE4 pipeline ? Are we at the stage where it just works?
Not yet. No.
Here`s the official dev blog about what works and what does not: http://code.blender.org/index.php/2014/06/supporting-game-developers-with-blender-2-71/