Unreal 3D Engine Manual Reference

Unreal Engine 4 Manual Unreal Editor Interface
The Basics

If you are new to the editor, it will be useful to acquaint yourself with a few basic concepts regarding the user interface and general workflow. Below are a few primary topics to get your feet wet if you are just starting out.

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In-Editor Testing (Play & Simulate)

Guide to testing levels and gameplay directly in the editor.
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Editor Viewports
A guide to navigation techniques and visualization settings for the Unreal Editor viewports.
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Layout Customization
A look at how to customize the look and feel of the user interface by rearranging and docking various panels and tabs.
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Level Editor
A guide that overviews the design and construction of game levels and environments.
Editors, Browsers, and Tools facebook
Not every part of Unreal Editor is exposed by default, as it would simply require too much screen space to show everything. Some parts only show themselves when you attempt to edit a certain type of asset. Others become available when trying to change specific types of properties. Still others exist as ways to make it easier to perform certain operations, such as bringing assets into your levels and environments.


The Level Editor provides the core level creation functionality for Unreal Editor. This is where levels are created, viewed, and modified mainly by placing, transforming, and editing the properties of Actors.FB

In Unreal Editor, the scenes in which you create your game experience are generally referred to as Levels. You can think of a level as a 3D environment into which you place a series of objects and geometry to define the world your players will experience. Any object that is placed in your world, be it a light, a mesh, or a character, is considered to be an Actor. Technically speaking, Actor is a programming class used within the Unreal Engine to define an object that has 3D position, rotation, and scale data. For sake of ease, however, it will be easiest to think of an Actor as any object that can be placed in your levels.

At its most basic level, creating levels boils down to placing items in a map inside Unreal Editor. These items may be world geometry, decorations in the form of Brushes, Static Meshes, lights, player starts, weapons, or vehicles. Which items are added when is usually defined by the particular workflow used by the level design team.
The Default Interface

Since the interface for Unreal Editor is highly customizable, it is possible that what you see may change from one launch to the next. Below, you can see the default interface layout: facebook

Tab Bar and Menu Bar

Toolbar

Modes

Content Browser

Viewports

World Outliner

Details

Tab Bar

The Level Editor has a tab along the top providing the name of the level currently being edited. Tabs from other editor windows may be docked alongside this tab for quick and easy navigation, similar to a web browser.

The name of the tab itself will reflect the level currently being edited. This is a pattern consistent throughout the editor - editor tabs will be named after the current asset being edited.

The Menu Bar in editor should be familiar to anyone who has used Windows applications previously. It provides access to general tools and commands that are used when working with levels in the editor.

Main Menu Bar

See the Menu Bar page for descriptions of each menu and its contents.

The Console (`) is a text field that allows special console commands to be entered that are recognized by the editor. The text field has an auto-complete feature that automatically lists all commands matching the text currently in the box.
Source Control Status

This tells whether you are connected to source control. You can mouse over for connection details, and click to set up a connection. Perforce and Subversion are supported. See Source Control documentation for details.
Toolbar
Toolbar Panel