The Unreal Editor (UnrealEd) is a pure “What You See Is What You Get” content creation tool filling the void between asset creation tools like 3DS Max, Maya and XSI, and shippable game content. The editor is actually a suite of various tools for realizing content in the Unreal Engine. Features include:
- State-of-the-art visual level designer for placement and editing of gameplay objects such as players, NPCs, inventory items, AI path nodes and light sources.
- Fully interactive real-time rendering of levels while editing, including dynamic lighting and shadows. All level content in the editor is presented consistently with the game engine itself!
- Built on a data-driven property editing framework, allowing level designers to easily customize any game object, and programmers to expose new customizable properties to designers via script.
- Load and edit huge environments composed of many seamlessly streaming sub-levels.
- Native 64-bit editing tools allow for huge environments to be loaded into memory. A 32-bit content tool chain is also fully supported.
- In-editor “Play Here” button puts gameplay just one mouse click away, allowing for gameplay testing in one editor window while modifying objects and rearranging geometry in another.
- Brush-based architectural design system for rapid level prototyping and shelling.
- Takes full advantage of multiple processor cores for accelerating workflow, such as generation of static light and shadow interaction.
- Includes a suite of content editing tools:
- A powerful new Content Browser for organizing game assets of all types, including a robust asset tagging system, and a slick, modern interface. Users can quickly search through all assets in the entire game (whether they�re loaded or not) and apply tags without having to check out files or worry about contention between users. Search features are simple and intuitive, and a robust filtering system is right at hand. Assets can be organized into "collections" and shared with other users. Users can create and maintain asset package files with full support for source control interactions.
- Terrain Editor, a landscape design tool. Supports geometry editing and painting of alpha layers onto terrain to control blending and decoration, collision data, and displacement maps.
- Material Editor, an intuitive visual tool for designing materials and shaders.
- Mesh Editor, for previewing meshes and adjusting physics properties. Also includes support for simplification of meshes, generating LODs and texture coordinates, and fracturing objects.
- Animation Editors, for configuring skeletal animation behavior, designing complex animation states, and binding them to in-game events such as sounds and script notifications.
- UnrealPhAT, the Physics Asset Tool for creating physics rigs for characters and objects (e.g. ragdolls).
- UnrealCascade, a particle physics and environmental effects editor.
- UnrealMatinee, a powerful tool for authoring in-game cinematics.
- UnrealKismet, a visual scripting language.
- UI Editor, a style-based designer for user interfaces. Includes built-in support for importing True Type fonts.
- Sound Cue Editor, for sequencing audio events and adjusting sound properties.
- Post-process Editor, for chaining together after-effects such as motion blur and depth of field.
- Lens Flare Editor, for cinematic lens effects.
- Mesh fracturing tool, enables developers to take virtually any existing mesh, slice it up into as many fragments as desired, and destroy structures.
- Task Browser, for keeping track of outstanding tasks for the currently-loaded level. Integrates with defect-tracking software of choice, with built-in support for TestTrack Pro by Seapine Software.
- Scene Manager with ample geometry and lighting statistics to help teams optimize scene complexity and performance.
- Reference Graph viewer keeps track of level’s asset dependencies automatically.
- Level Browser allows the content creators to organize their content into the streaming sub-levels and filter the levels for quick access to complex worlds
- Mesh Painting tool allows artists to unique paint colors and texture blend weights directly onto 3D models in the world.
- UnrealFacade, a graphical editing tool for procedurally generated architecture
- Asset workflow:
- Plug-ins for Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya and SoftImage XSI allow for importing models with mesh topology, mapping coordinates, skeleton structure, animation data, smoothing groups and materials names.
- Built-in support for importing meshes and animations from COLLADA files.
- Fully integrated source control, so that artists and level designers can check out content packages, modify, and check in from within the editor.
- Support for importing content from industry-standard Autodesk FBX file formats.
- All of the other features expected from the leading game content editing tool: Multi-level undo/redo, drag-and-drop, object grouping, auto-save features, grid controls, zoom around cursor in viewports, standard or inverted camera movement, copy-and-paste, customizable viewport configurations, keyboard and color customization, etc.
- Every Unreal Engine license includes the right to redistribute UnrealEd publicly, enabling teams to release the content creation tools along with their game to the mod community. Mod support has been a major factor behind the success of many prominent PC games today, and we anticipate that support for PC-based mod development may be a significant factor in future console games as well.
