50 Unreal Engine 5 Tips that you might not know of! (Beginner friendly)

so in this video i'll be sharing 50 unreal engine tips that cover hotkeys workflow shortcuts some basics plugins and more and if you're an unreal engine expert you might probably know a lot of these tips already but i think you will find at least one or two that will be useful to you and if i didn't miss out on anything important please feel free to leave it in the comments below i've also left timestamps as well as some relevant links in the description box so starting this off with tip number one you can press ctrl and spacebar to toggle the content drawer you can also dock it in place with this button over here and the best part about the content drawer is that you can use it while you're working on other windows so let's say i'm working on materials all i have to do is press ctrl space same thing with niagara and blueprints if you want to add actors to your scene go to create all classes and then type in what you're looking for but what i would recommend is that you go to create and then click place actors panel now it'll make a little window where every actor is organized and you can dock it wherever you want if you're not a fan of the ue5 layout and you want the uv phone back go to window load layout and ue4 classic layout and if you want to switch it back go to window load layout default editor layout i'm sure you know how to move an actor by dragging it on an axis but did you know that you can move along with it by holding shift and then dragging it you can copy an actor by pressing ctrl c and ctrl v you can also make a copy by holding alt and then dragging it on any x's and to move along with the copied asset hold alt shift and then drag it active piloting works like you're possessing an actor it could be a static mesh it could be a light but the real value is when you use it on a camera so instead of trying to frame the shot manually you can just right click pilot actor and then frame the exact shot that you want and to leave click on the triangle on the top left you can press the w key to move an actor e to rotate r to scale and press space bar to cycle through that to scale an object evenly click on the lock here beside scale and transform and when you key in a value the same value will be applied on all three axises and if you have an object with a different xyz value and you click the lock and you scale it the same value will now also apply uniformly you can snap axles to the ground by pressing the n key this is convenient if you want to set up your levels quickly you can change an actor's pivot point temporarily by clicking on any surface with the middle mouse button but if i let go and then i come back the pivot point will be reset you can toggle game view by pressing g and to go to full screen press f11 you can press the f key to zoom to an actor this is a very good way to navigate your level especially if you have a bigger one this also works on the world outliner so let's say you got lost while you're working on your level so just click on anything that you know is in your scene and then press the f key to zoom in hold the right click and then press c key and if i let go i'll be back to normal now to zoom out it's the same thing just hold right click and then press the z key and if you want to change your fov permanently click on the drop down menu on the top left and then go to field of view you can either increase or decrease it so this tip is also on navigating your level you can press any number from 0 to 9 to use a viewport bookmark and to set up a viewport bookmark press ctrl and any number from 0 to 9. so for example i'm going to be looking at these rocks over here and then i press ctrl n0 if i walk away and then i press 0 i'm back here you can also do this manually by going to the drop down menu on the top left you can jump to bookmarks set bookmarks and also clear them from here to hide an actor click on it and then press the h key this also works in multiple actors and to unhide all of them press ctrl and h to find an object in the content browser click on it and then press ctrl and b this can also be done by clicking on the magnifying glass over here if your actor is a static mesh you can also press ctrl and e to jump to the static mesh editor to rename a file instead of right-clicking on it and then rename click on it and then press f2 this also works in folders and the word outliner you can have up to four content browsers so just click on content content browser one two three and four so this is something that a lot of people might not know about if you hold ctrl and the middle mouse button and then you drag up you go to top view down bottom left back right front and if you drag diagonally you'll be back to perspective you can also do this by going to perspective on the top left and then choose it manually but i just find that this is much quicker so let's say you have a few static meshes that share the same material and you don't want to select them one by one so all you got to do is select a few and then right click select similar material i binded mine to alt q to make it faster but this is completely up to you this also works on mega skins assets which then brings me to my next point so you can set your own custom keybinds by going to edit editor preferences and then you want to click on keyboard shortcuts now you can either scroll through to find what you're looking for but i recommend to just type it in so i'm going to type in material and there we have it select all the same material i binded mine to all cue but you can change it as you wish if you want to place an actor to a precise location firstly copy it and then click on the surface that you want it to be on then we use the pastry command now to set it up go to edit editor preferences and then just type in paste i binded mine to backslash but this is completely up to you too many things in your workspace don't worry select what you want to work on and then right click visibility show only selected this works like an isolate tool and to bring everything back press ctrl h if you ever find yourself changing the camera speed a lot and then you do this please stop there's a better way so move forward and then hold right click and as you scroll up you'll move faster and it's the same thing for slowing down so move forward right click and then scroll down the next tip is on the post process volume you can do a lot of things with the post process volume but it only works if you're in the bounds so if i go in the bounds here my scene is changing and if i go out it's overexposed again now to make this affect the whole scene go to your post process volume and in settings just type in infinite and there we have it make sure you check infinite and bound and now it will affect the whole scene you should always set your minimum and maximum exposure at a constant value this is so that it's easier to work on your lighting and to keep things consistent you can also consider turning off auto exposure so go to settings project settings and then just type in auto exposure and make sure you uncheck it tip 27 exposure compensation so i have two post process volumes in front of me the one on the left has an exposure compensation value of five and the one on the right has a value of negative five if i step into the one on the right my scene turns really dark and if i go back out it's back to normal and if i step into the one on the left it becomes really bright so this is a very quick way to change the brightness without having to adjust the lighting for the whole scene if you're using lumen and you want to change your gi quickly go to the post process volume and type in lumen now you can choose lumen screen space or raytrace you can control the directional light by pressing ctrl and l if i drag it all the way up it's noon and if i drag it all the way down it's night time this can also be done in a more controlled manner so go to your directional light and then press e to rotate you can move the sunrays around and i would only do this if i wanted to be really precise if you're using lumen for your lighting and you see a lot of splotches and artifacts on your wall an easy way to fix it would be to go to your post process volume and then type in lumen we're looking for final gather quality and change it from one to two and as you can see most of the artifacts are now gone with unreal engine 5 emissive materials now produce direct lighting this is the same scene in unreal engine 5 and in unreal engine 4. so in ue4 the ball is not producing any sort of direct lighting but it is over here and if i move it the light will follow if i increase the size of the ball the light will be brighter this also means that you can use efficient materials as a part of your lighting for your scenes to add a point light quickly hold l and click with the left mouse button nanite is a new feature in unreal engine 5 that allows you to use super high poly models at almost no costs so firstly for static meshes that are going to be imported you just have to make sure that you check build nanite while you're importing it and secondly for static meshes that are already in your scene you want to click on the static mesh and then press control and b then right click nanite and enable it tip 34 output log you can type in your console commands over here but if you want to see the full log go to window and then just check upload you now have this window over here and you can dock it anywhere you want so if you see this message here on the top left it basically means that you might not have enough memory for your scene there are two possible ways to fix it so firstly go to settings project settings and then you want to type in virtual textures then make sure you check enable virtual texture support now you also need to make sure that you have your apple logout if you don't have your output log out go to window and then just check up a log and then you want to copy and paste this command or not streaming the full size and when you press enter you should see a couple numbers for me it says 1010 so these numbers basically mean how much memory you have in your texture pool right now so if i increase my number from 1010 to 2000 that should probably fix it but i do not recommend going too high with the value here so plugins are like optional extensions that can help with your workflow a lot and to access them all you have to do is go to settings and just click on plugins so the next tip is also on the plugin this one is called the data smith plugin and basically this plugin helps you import scenes from other 3d softwares all into unreal with just a couple clicks so to show you an example this very scene here is made in 3ds max and imported into unreal with data smith before we begin there are two things you need to do firstly go to settings plugins and then just type in data smith you need to check dude smith content and the data smith importer you'll be asked to restart and then just click restart now secondly you have to download the exporter for whatever free software you're using i'll leave a link to it down in the comments below so just download it and then install it after that let's say i want to import this uh among this toy and my doge cup all into the unreal scene so what i have to do now is select them and then go to file export export selected and we just have to export it as an unreal data space file u.datasmith name it something and just click save now back in unreal all we have to do is go to content click on data smith and click on the very file that we just saved i'm going to save it under data smith click ok make sure the geometry materials and textures and cameras are checked we don't need lights or animations because we don't have any of that and most importantly we need to make sure that generate uv light maps are checked and just click import now just give it a while to load and while we're waiting you can just type in exposure in the world outliner and click on global exposure post process and delete it and there we have it both the among us and the dodge cup are in with just a few clicks although we have to do some minor adjustments on the materials that was almost effortless so give data screen for try it's actually my favorite plugin and it will save you a lot of time if you do aec so the next tip is on the water systems in lms plugin so these basically let you make oceans rivers streams or even links all into unreal with just a few clicks so to begin go to settings plugins and then just type in lan make sure you check land mass and water and you'll be asked to restart so just click restart then go to your place actors panel and then just type in water now let's say i want to add a lake so just drag and drop water body lake and there we have a lake to add a river it is the exact same thing just drag and drop water by the river and drop it in you can also control the size with the nodes and you can also join the water bodies together to add an ocean go to an empty landscape and then just drag and drop water by the ocean and then you want to scale it down just like that you can also control the size of the waves how fast it moves and if i go underwater there's an automatic post process for it so the next tip is on the movie render q plugin this one looks like an extension or sequencer but you get a higher quality and a cinematic look so to set it up go to settings plugins and then just type in movie make sure you check movie render queue and you'll be asked to restart so just click restart after that go to window cinematics and just click movie render queue then click on render and choose the sequence that you want to render then click on settings and i would recommend removing jpeg and replacing it with png because it has a higher quality click on settings and make sure you add anti-aliasing in the anti-aliasing method has to be set to none you can also change the temporal sample account to 64 and check override entity listing as well so the higher the temporal sample counts you have the higher the quality will be but i don't recommend going higher than 64 because 32 or 64 will do you can also save this as a preset so you don't have to set this up every single time click render local and you're done tip number 40 please do not add every single plugin i know plugins are amazing at all but having every single one of them just does not work it'll just slow your unreal engine down to the point where you can't even get any work done and i'm speaking from experience because that is exactly what i did when i was starting out instead what i would recommend is that you just get a few plugins that you really need and then just start from there so in unreal engine 5 mega scans are now a part of unreal by default so to access them go to content and then just click on quicksort bridge you'll be then asked to sign in and after that you'll have access if you go to the 3d asset section you find out that some of the models now have a nanite option so what the nano option is is that it basically means that the model has the highest amount of polygons and it is meant to be used with nanites so you ever notice how the default sequence moves kind of weird it starts up slow and then it speeds up and slows back down so to fix it go to your sequence select the keyframes and then change them from cubic auto into linear and now if you play it back it'll be linear which is way more common asset filters can be used to organize your files in the content browser so to get started click on the little drop down menu over here and if i click on basic it's gonna automatically select blueprints c plus plus materials skeletal mesh static mesh texture and level so let's say i only want static meshes so all i have to do is left click on everything else to toggle it if we want to add textures and materials to the filter i just have to click on texture and materials once you can also clean the filters by right clicking and then click on reset filters now you can also add an acid filter for everything over here making it super convenient to find your work so these are just some hotkeys that you can use in the material editor so if you hold one and then click you get a constant vector node you hold two and then click you get a constant two vector you hold three and then click constant three vector you hold four and then click constant four vector if you hold m and then you click you get a multiply note d and you click divide a and you click add and lastly if you press s and you click a scalar parameter node a quick way to break connections between nodes will be to hold alt and then click with the left mouse button you can also move the connections between nodes by holding ctrl and just dragging them around does your material editor ever look like this well if you want to clean up your workspace and remove some of the notes that are not connected you can click on the click graph button and it'll remove everything that is not connected making it a little bit tidier so you can also use comments to try to label workspace so just select a couple notes and then press the c key you can also rename it and resize it as you wish to take a high resolution screenshot go to the drop down menu on the top left and you want to click on high resolution screenshot then make sure you're in full screen so to do that press f11 next you can choose whether you want to crop render or you want to render the whole viewport so to render click on the little camera and there you have it and then there'll be a little pop-up on the bottom right and if you click on it it'll bring you to where the files are being stored you can also increase the size multiply of the render by increasing the values over here but i don't recommend going higher than two or three you can also increase the quality of the render by going to the drop down menu top left and then increasing the screen percentage by default it is 100 but i don't recommend going higher than 120 or 130 because it'll affect your whole viewport and it might crash your unreal engine 249 some channels that you should know of so these are just some channels that make content on the real engine that i personally watch and i've learned a lot from i'll also leave the link to the channels down in the comments below so starting off with unreal sensei he has tutorials that are really long and in depth some are two hours some are four hours making it suitable for someone who is an absolute beginner william fosher so he covers stuff on film cinematics lighting and other general tips which are all in super high detail and very easy to follow along mr treaty dev so he covers mainly game art and cinematics you know materials and he has a lot of tutorials that are explaining all of this in detail and why it's done that way smart poly so he covers game dev content from character animations making maps open world games he also has a few videos where he shows the process of how he made a few games from scratch vr division so vr division covers stuff on arc phase how to import your models from other three softwares how to texture them and how to light them all in unreal ryan manning surround his videos that go in detail with lighting texturing materials and other general tips death addict so death also covers videos on game dev on how to add specific kind of games or features into unreal they have enabled so deaf enabled is also about game development but they are more focused on the development pipeline with a lot of in-depth videos code like me so called lamy also covers game dev content mainly programming blueprint he also has very specific videos on how to implement certain features like npc main menu open world map and many more last but not least we have polygon academy so polygon academy mainly focuses on game art a lot of videos on how to set up environments how to set up scenes how to compose them as well as how to light them the final tip is on the arnold slacker's discord channel so this is a server with a lot of unreal engine users from all over the world you can look through the different channels that are categorized accordingly you can also chat about the topics there ask questions and even get feedback about your work there is also a job board where you can look for a job or a project that you want to work on or even hire people to help with your project and most importantly you can hang out with these amazing people who are all passionate about unreal engine that is it for the video please consider liking and goodbye

Channel: ElfRat

Views: 263,773

Keywords: ue5, tips, unreal engine, archviz, sequencer, beginner friendly, ue5 nanite, unreal engine 5, unreal engine 4 vs unreal engine 5, tips and tricks, quixel bridge

Id: iayPiX8tBmQ

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 22 2022