Migrating to UNIGINE from Unreal Engine

Unreal Editor Viewports and Editor Viewports in UnigineEditor are very much alike. You can use as many Editor Viewports as you need.

By default, an Editor Viewport renders its own Editor Camera view, and you can switch to another camera present in the scene and control it the same way as you pilot a CameraActor in UE.

Navigation inside Editor Viewports is pretty much the same as in UE Viewports. However, get familiar with Scene Navigation so as not to miss details.

Unreal Editor Viewport	UNIGINE Editor Viewport

You can use:

• Camera panel to switch between cameras and configure the current one.
• Rendering Debug to display the contents of rendering buffers the same way as using the Buffer Visualization Mode in UE4.
• Navigation panel to quickly set up and switch between camera speed presets and change the camera position.
• ViewCube to switch between the perspective/orthographic projections and control orientation of the camera.

Also, a set of switchers is available globally in the top toolbar:

• Helpers panel provides quick access to auxiliary visualizers, such as icons, gizmos and wireframes.
• Precompile All Shaders toggle is used for Forced Shaders Compilation
• Animation toggle
• Physics toggle
• Audio toggle

You are accustomed that Unreal Editor has the Play In Editor (PIE) mode launching the game in the current Viewport and being representative of your final build. You can also play in other modes and use the Simulate In Editor (SIE) mode to preview blueprints logic, animation and physics simulation.

In UNIGINE, you can enable animation and physics simulation using the toggles in the top toolbar. You can open the Engine viewport (menu: Windows -> Engine Viewport) where you can pilot the current Main Player.

To check application logic you will need to run an instance of the current compiled binary of the application via any of the following ways:

• Via SDK Browser by clicking Run:

  

  You can also run the application with custom settings by clicking an ellipsis under the Run button (e.g. choose the Debug binaries).

• By using the corresponding launcher created by default in the project folder:
  • launch_debug — the launcher of the project's debug version.
  • launch_release — the launcher of the project's release version.
• By running the project directly from the IDE used.

By default, the mouse cursor is grabbed when clicked at run time, providing camera movement control, press Esc to free the cursor. There are two ways to setup default Input Bindings (key states and the mouse behaviour):

• In the Controls settings of the Editor.
• Via code.

As well as UE4, UNIGINE has the Console used for standard input, output and error logging. A set of console commands is provided.

It is available both in UnigineEditor and a running application. To open the Console window in the Editor, go to Windows -> Console menu:

A built-in console is called by pressing the grave accent (`) key:

You can use it to print user messages from code.

In Unreal Engine, you got used to building your projects via the Editor. In UNIGINE, building a project is also done via UnigineEditor.

A project in UNIGINE, just like a UE project, is stored in its own folder, project settings are stored in the *.project file. There are various subfolders inside the project's folder, where your content and source files as well as various configuration files and binaries are stored. The most important are the data and source sub-folders.

In UNIGINE, each project has a data folder. Similar to a UE project's Content folder, this is where your project's assets are stored. To import assets into your project, simply drop files into your project's data directory and they will be automatically imported and appear in the Asset Browser. The assets in the editor will update automatically as you make changes to the files using an external program.

The core folder contains the built-in core assets. These assets are read-only and available for every project by default.

UNIGINE, like UE, supports the most commonly used file types and some specific ones:

Unreal Engine assets (.uasset) are not supported for import by UNIGINE. Use the source content files you have used in your UE projects or export assets in one of formats supported by UNIGINE.

Meshes

You can import assets you used in UE to UNIGINE: export your mesh as an FBX model and import it to UNIGINE checking the required import options depending on the model.

Materials

Similar to other engines, UNIGINE works with PBR materials. Moreover, UNIGINE supports both Metalness and Specular workflows and has a rich out-of-the-box library of materials that can be used to create almost any material. Therefore, materials created for the model in UE can be re-created in UNIGINE using mesh_base material, the base material in UNIGINE used for physically based materials.

Textures

Textures can be imported as a part of a model or separately and then applied to a mesh. To import textures, you might have to do some adjustments in advance. For example, the Shading texture in UNIGINE stores the metalness, roughness, specular, and microfiber maps in its corresponding channels (RGBA), so you need to modify the texture using third-party software, such as GIMP or Photoshop, and then import it to UNIGINE.

Normal texture used in UE is compatible with UNIGINE, therefore you can import your normal textures to UNIGINE without any changes.

Animations

If you want to import a bone-animated model, export it from UE as an FBX file and enable the Import Animations option during the import to UNIGINE. You will also have additional options to finetune the import.

For more details, see import recommendations.

This section gives a brief description of basic scene objects in both engines as well as their basic similarities and differences.

Blueprint Classes#

How to Collaborate?#

Cameras, the entities essential for rendering, are treated slightly differently in both engines.

In UE4, the CameraComponent is responsible for capturing a view and sending it to render. You usually set a Pawn actor with a CameraComponent attached as a default character by specifying it in a GameMode settings.

In UNIGINE, the Camera is a rendering-related object and implemented by the Player nodes in the world. There are several player types with different behaviour provided in order to simplify creation of the most commonly used cameras controlled via the input devices (keyboard, mouse, joystick):

• Dummy is a simple camera wrapper. You can use it for static cameras or enhance with custom logic.
• Spectator is a free flying camera.
• Persecutor is a flying camera that has the target and orbits it at the specified distance. It is a ready-to-use simple solution for a third-person camera.
• Actor is a player that is capable of providing physical interaction with scenery. It has a rigid physical body, which is approximated with a capsule shape. It is a ready-to-use simple solution for a first-person character.

Only one player can be rendered into the viewport at a moment. To switch between cameras in the Editor Viewport of the UnigineEditor, use the Camera panel:

By checking the Main Player flag of a player you set the default player, which will be rendered in the Editor's Engine viewport and on world startup when running the application.

You use Export and Import buttons in the project settings of the Unreal Editor to save the values of the settings to an external configuration file (.ini) and load them when necessary.

In UNIGINE, you can save and load general physics, sound and render settings the same way. The presets are stored as assets with the *.physics, *.sound and *.render extensions respectively. Use Load and Save .* asset buttons of the Settings window to work with presets of the corresponding settings section.

Saved assets appear in the Asset Browser. You can load the render settings by double-clicking the required .render asset.

Presets are not an Editor-only feature in UNIGINE. You can use Physics, Sound and Render classes to manage presets for corresponding settings, for example, to switch between quality levels at run time.

In UE4, settings for graphics quality are mostly gathered in the Engine - Rendering section.

In UNIGINE, the rendering settings of the world can be found in the Render section of the Settings window. You can also toggle on and off the most common render features by using the Rendering menu:

There is no platform-dependent quiality adjustments in UNIGINE, you should write your own logic to control the quality levels. You can use Render Presets for this purpose.

Deferred and Forward Shading#

Post Processing#