Accelerating Your In-Editor Workflows with Editor Utilities | GDC 2024

No one likes to do the same thing twice. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get the computer to do the work for you? With Unreal Engine’s Editor Utilities, you can! Expedite your production, improve your iterations, and accelerate your workflows so you can get back to doing what’s most important.

[@JordanParsons808]

This guy's intro and tying it to a legit real-world example was fantastic. Can't wait for future demos from him 👏🏽 Mahalo 🤙🏽

[@andreyalekseev3125]

Matt does the most useful and interesting presentations and he's getting even better every time. Thanks a lot, man! Hope to see more of your stuff in the future

[@Ozzmeister00]

Thank you so much!

[@TimRastall]

This was super useful. Excellent presentation and delivery ❤. Much joy for Editor Utility Function Library support in 5.4!

[@Funsoms]

It was so great seeing this in person! Fantastic presentation!

[@Ozzmeister00]

Thanks!

[@hardway777]

Now I can create material from selected textures! Cool!

[@VRchitecture]

I’m just 30% in but undo subsystem setup* and blueprint trick with drag’n’drop function input have already made this video extra useful 🤩 *hope it works for editor scriptable tools as well

[@samgoldwater]

This was awesome thank you Matt!

[@mariolopez-oi2td]

Great delivery!

[@marcfruchtman9473]

Great topic! Thank you so much for explaining this. One favor, The video isn't very crisp at this resolution... could you please do future videos at 2K or higher resolution?

[@JOEFRAUST]

WE NEED UNREAL ENGINE MERCH 🤓

[@annyantuv9068]

I already have it lol

[@JOEFRAUST]

@@annyantuv9068 a website where the public can buy awesome merch! I'm sure all creators and developers would love to buy official merch!

[@tjrizvi251]

Homie looks like the picture for the Nerd Rage perk. Dude's built

[@l_t_m_f]

very cool presentation !

[@SlombyChannel]

Great!

[@EFX612]

super helpful, thank you!

[@linyuzqlby2590]

super great！~

[@GeekL30N]

Thank you

[@matiasadrianmahler322]

This is super cool, thank you!! I'm curious, if you would want to duplicate the materials in a new folder on your project content browser, and then replace references to the scene assets for the new ones so that is non destructive of the old implementation, could that be done?

[@Ozzmeister00]

Actually! I think the easiest way to do this would be to toggle Enable Tessellation on your material assets. If you disable it, no harm no foul since nothing is connected. That way you don't have to keep track of which tessellated material instance maps to which non-tessellated material instance. This also reduces the amount of assets that you'd have to change. Otherwise you're probably duplicating materials to add the logic, and then changing the parents for all the material instances. Reverting would then require you to know which materials the instances were originally parented to.

[@yanhu]

Can't understand the second half of this video😵‍💫, EPIC please make more tutorials about Editor Utilities.

[@Ozzmeister00]

Let me know where I lost you! I'm happy to make it clearer and I can add details to the EDC article.

[@RealTimeFilms]

@@Ozzmeister00 More examples about how one would go and put a custom button on that empty shell on the interface, would be great. Just like mentioned in the first part. Not to mention even very simple examples about using C++ to customize the editor, but that would probably go beyond the scope of this tutorial.

[@mrooglyboogie4118]

YES

[@MaximSmak3d]

Uwesome!!! But how to create "my project subsystem" and and there this functions?

[@Ares9323]

Why does the "Undo buffer" work randomly? I've noticed that if you rename files CTRL+Z does nothing (they're not even marked as modified), if you set the texture group of a Texture2D nothing happens (despite it's marked as dirty)

[@gocurt]

Thanks a lot for awesome information, I just wonder that 10:33 despite `is enabled in PIE` checked in class settings still I can't execute script on runtime, however when I stop the game then execution taking place, any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[@Ozzmeister00]

Are you trying to open the widget during PIE? Or is it already open when you hit PIE?

[@gocurt]

@@Ozzmeister00 It's already open, so I just create question in unreal forums under Programming & Scripting > UI (EUW Won’t Execute Script in PIE!) which you can find the details

[@RationalBike]

i am somewhat scared of this wizardry

[@Ozzmeister00]

Be not afraid!

[@ChadVernon]

What is the difference between using a subsystem to write functions vs writing functions in a blueprint function library in c++?

[@Ozzmeister00]

Two key benefits: 1) Subsystems are persistent objects during the editor session, so they can be used to store data and can even have dispatchers whereas BFLs are static functions, and 2) scoping. You have to Get the subsystem so the functions aren't automatically populating the context menu. BFLs go straight to the context menu.

[@ChadVernon]

Got it. Thanks!

[@cagatkinson]

EDIT: Coming back to this, I'm still incredibly annoyed that the example given in the video of an async task, does not run asynchronously, because of the for loop. And the actual async task example is a "One I made earlier" task with absolutely no explanation of how it was built. I'm having some problems with this, creating a simple task that increments an integer to 1000000 does not run async, the loop hits a stack overflow. Creating static mesh instances also completely locks the editor instead of running async.

[@mattoztalay5713]

Depends on how you're incrementing the integer! I've been bitten before where I make a ForLoop in the event graph with a delay at the end, because the ForLoop doesn't wait for the delay to end before moving on to the next item. Instead I have to make an event that increments my integer, delays, and then calls that same event again (if it hasn't reached the maximum integer I need to process).

[@cagatkinson]

@@mattoztalay5713 yeah, I was really hoping to do a simple loop! I've seen a similar solution where the loop is simply a branch which feeds back into itself (with an AsyncEditorDelay for 1 frame at the end), and finishes the task when the branch condition is met. I'm going to change it for the event that calls itself though, as that feels a lot tidier! Thanks for the idea :) It's definitely a case of the foor loop not being async though, and so defeating the point of the Editor Utility Task. Just something to bear in mind for the future I guess!

[@NicolasGagne]

Where is the link snipet please ? :)

[@fran.fndz.techart]

I tried the task technique but the editor still freeze and the task dialog only show up when everything is done.. 😢

[@Ozzmeister00]

What kind of stuff are you trying to run in your editor utility task? There are some things that are blocking operations.

[@fran.fndz.techart]

@@Ozzmeister00copy some ism custom data to a component, I finally did it (before I had a loading bar but I upgraded for the task popup lol). 😆 had to use 2 utility task, one for doing the job and another for counter (saw this technique at unreal forum)

[@swrcPATCH]

Did he really just say "Engine kaputt" XD

[@ErichToven]

"Quick show of hands.." Pretends that the room isn't mostly empty. Ghost person raises his hand.

[@HolyMolyNEWTonMusicNProgrammer]

First pin and heart

[@GES1985]

Unreal Engine needs an official chatbot that knows general engine knowledge, blueprints, and c++ to help noobs like me make the game of my dreams

[@LimitedPerfection]

If you have ChatGPT 4.0 you can access a GPT with (what appears to be) a catalog of UEs backend. Its in the GPT store.

[@importon]

You need an Ai agent/assistant in the editor.

[@abdulshabazz8597]

There was a 3rd party Promethean AI for Unreal Engine presentation at GDC, 3 years ago for a UI plugin that was in Beta... kzbin.info/www/bejne/nnKTfqZ9jNugsNUsi=wKQ-Ix-PmNr0l2uW The idea was to license the plugin for s monthly subscription (10.00 USD-20.00 USD), similar to the dash command window plugin.

[@VRchitecture]

No offense, but from your ubiquitous “add an AI” comments it seems that it’s you need an assistant, not the Unreal 🤷🏻‍♂️ If you don’t do staff already having simple yet powerful tool at your disposal, chances you’d start with an AI on top of that aren’t that high.

[@importon]

@@VRchitecture no offense but have you been living under a rock for the past year? I’m not hand waving a buzzword here, I use AI to code daily as part of my job and keep up with developments in that area. If unreal is not working on this (I really hope they are in secret at least), they will be left in the dust.

[@VRchitecture]

@@importon Pretty sure Epics work on it and still you shouldn’t expect the feature to be released tomorrow, or a month later. Until then… if you can’t live without an AI ask your LLM about fine tuning (there’re a lot of materials to be used for training - docs/sources/projects/whatever). After all you’re a developer, right?

[@importon]

@@VRchitecture never said I was a dev, but way to jump to conclusions. Speaking of, Epic has a public roadmap where this feature is nowhere to be found, so unlike you, I’m not “Pretty sure Epics work on it”