Navigation and the UnrealEd Interface
This tutorial will teach you the basics of navigating in UnrealEd, along with some of the basic GUI (Graphical User Interface) elements. In other words, start here.Up to Your First Level directory | Continue to Subtracting
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Open UnrealEd. You will see the standard four viewports: the bottom-left one will be the 3D viewport, the upper-left is the top-down 2D viewport, and the two on the right are called "Front" and "Side" 2D viewports although it doesn't really matter which one is which. You can change which viewports show what by clicking the T, F, and S buttons in the grey bar above the viewports; these will switch the viewports to Top, Front, and Side, respectively. To switch a viewport to the 3D view, click one of the buttons on the grey bar that looks like a cube with various designs. For a discussion of the types of 3D views, see Key Terms>>3D. You'll learn more about these and their uses later. For now, leave the viewports alone.
Navigation in UnrealEd is based around the Camera actor. (Actors are everything in the Unreal Universe: anything you can see is an actor, and in UnrealEd you will be placing a lot of actors that you won't see in-game. For now, think of actors as entities or objects. You'll learn more about them later in this section, on the page called Actors.) Any time you move around in the 3D viewports, you're basically just moving the Camera. This actor's purpose is essentially to point at things so you can see them in the 3D viewport. It's irrelevant in the 2D viewports, though it's possible to find, select, and edit the camera's properties there (but not recommended). It's sometimes difficult to find the camera in the 2D viewports because it often disappears when you get too close. If you save a map and return to it later, your camera will maintain the same orientation and position it had when you saved.
There are three important mouse combinations to use for navigation in the 3D viewport:
Left-click-and-drag will move the camera forwards and backwards.
Right-click-and-drag rotates the camera up, down, left, and right.
Both mouse buttons clicked together, combined with mouse dragging, will move the camera left, right, up, or down without changing the camera's rotation.
To navigate in the 2D viewports:
Scroll wheel zooms in and out.
Any click-and-hold combination pans the camera.
This will feel unnatural at first, but 99% of people pick it up within 5 minutes (even without being told what to do). It becomes very fluid and second-nature, so just give it time if you're used to something else. The feeling of the entire Unreal community, with hardly an exception, is that the UnrealEd navigation system is the best of its kind.
And there you have it! Feel free to zoom around. Note the edges of the world in Top view and the blue and red lines in Side and Front view; we'll talk about those later. (If you don't see them, just zoom way out.)
You can change the camera speed with the button on the left that looks like three horizontal bars decreasing in size. This is useful for navigating long distances. Note that it affects all four viewports. (If you can't find the button, it might be in a "button menu" that has been "collapsed." To "expand" the menu, click the arrow (if it's pointing up, the menu is collapsed, and down means expanded) on one of the gray bars. The terms "Expand" and "Collapse" simply refer to whether the buttons on that menu are visible or not.)
To snap the camera to a point, click the button on the gray bar above the appropriate viewport that looks like an eye, and then click an actor. All three viewports will snap to that actor, but you won't see it right away except in the viewport in which you clicked the actor. If you move or rotate the camera at this point, you will also move and rotate the actor that you snapped the camera to. To free the camera so that this doesn't happen, click the eye again. This is useful both for adjusting actors (particularly lights) and for moving across a large map quickly.
Before we go, let's talk about the interface a little more. Along the left are the buttons that you'll be using for most of the tasks you perform in UnrealEd; the most important right now are the builder brushes, which we'll get to in the next two tutorials. They look like 3D shapes. At the top of the screen, there are nine buttons, starting with the one that looks like a Chess pawn, which open the Browser window for various types of actors and other things. Also up there is the 2D shape editor and the Rebuild buttons, both of which we'll get to later. Last in that line of buttons is one that looks like a joystick: clicking on that will allow you to playtest your map. Don't click it yet--the game will crash, because we haven't built the map yet.
Above each viewport (but most importantly the 3D one) there should be a lot of buttons that look like cubes. These affect how you view your map, from lighting it to a wireframe outline. Clicking them won't do anything right now, so leave it as-is. To the left of those buttons is another joystick. This one enables "real-time preview," which makes the 3D viewport act like the game is actually running. You still won't be controlling a player, but it will allow you to see some effects that are not normally visible in the Editor.
In the bottom-left corner of each dialog is a directional indicator which tells you which way you're facing. In the 3D viewport it will rotate with the camera, and it has 3 branches--blue (Z-axis, or up/down) green (Y-axis, or forward/back) and red (X-axis, or left/right). In the 2D viewports, it does not change.
You won't know what these options are yet, but go ahead and right-click on the gray bar above a viewport and choose "View" from the context menu. This list gives you the ability to show or hide each of the items on it, which becomes very useful later. Keep in mind though that some of these can seriously slow down your machine when enabled. If you choose "Actor" instead of "View" from the context menu, you can choose "Radii view," which allows you to see the effective range of lights and other actors. To switch back, choose "Full Actor View."
If you don't like the way the viewports are laid out, you can change it with View>>Viewports>>Configure. This will bring up a menu with choices of viewport layouts. If you don't like any of those, you can navigate to View>>Viewports and choose Floating (instead of fixed) which allows you to have control over the viewports as if they were their own windows, so you can adjust their sizes and positions however you like. View>>Viewports>>Configure (you don't have to change anything, just hit cancel) will also fix the "whitescreen" bug, which usually occurs after a rebuild. If that bug occurs, all the viewports will turn white. It's not that it's snowing in there, you just need to reconfigure your viewports and your UnrealEd will be all happy again.
The key combination [Shift] + MMB drag will create a "ruler" that exists as long as both keys are held down; this "ruler" follows the mouse and expands from the location of the mouse when the button combo was first pressed to the current location of the mouse. This means that it can be used to measure distances, instead of having to count the blocks.
More about the interface will be explained later as it becomes relevant.
Review
There are 4 viewports: one shows a 3D view, and the others show an overhead, front, and side view in 2D.
To navigate in 3D:
LMB moves forward/back
RMB rotates camera
RMB+LMB moves left/right and up/downTo navigate in 2D:
Scroll wheel zooms
LMB movesTo change the camera speed, click the button that looks like horizontal bars decreasing in size
To snap the camera to a point, click the button that looks like an eye, and then an actor
Important buttons, especially the builder brush buttons, are on the left side of the screen
Above the 3D viewport are a lot of cubes which change the type of 3D view
Buttons at the top of the screen open Browsers and do other great things
The joystick above the 3D viewport toggles Realtime Preview
View>>Viewports>>Configure changes viewport layout and fixes whitescreens
Right-clicking on the gray bar above a viewport and choosing "View" or "Actor" from the context menu does helpful things
Shift + MMB allows quick distance measurements
Whew! That was a lot of stuff. Make sure you've got it all down though, because we might not be coming back to it later and it's going to prove invaluable to you in your forays into UnrealEd.
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