So it’s time for another post; this time we’ll be looking at a few features of the Unreal Engine 4 editor that you may not know about that could increase your productivity. We use most of these features on a daily basis and can’t imagine working without them.
- While in simulation mode (Alt + S), you can keep the changes made to any actor by selecting it/them and pressing ‘K’ (alternatively, Right-click > Keep Simulation Changes). Usually, in simulate mode, any changes made are lost when you drop back out; but this lets you keep them for specific actors. Combined with physics, this means you can easily stack/scatter objects in a realistic way by enabling ‘Simulate Physics’ on a group of actors, let them fall in simulate mode, and then keep their new positions.
- Press ‘End’ to snap an actor to the surface below it.
- Ctrl + End snaps actors back to the grid.
- Ctrl + Number keys (not numpad) bookmarks a camera position, pressing the number keys (without holding Ctrl) moves the camera to the corresponding bookmarked position.
- Pressing ‘F’ frames a selected actor to your viewport.
- Ctrl + P opens an asset menu where you can search for assets and drag them into the scene without going through the content browser.
- Holding Alt while moving (or rotating) an actor will duplicate it. Holding Shift while moving an actor will make the editor camera follow along.
- Right-clicking a vertex of a brush will snap it to the grid (only if positional grid snapping is enabled).
- Using the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ keys will increment/decrement the positional snapping grid size.
- Copying an object to the clipboard will copy it in a readable text format, allowing you to copy between levels/projects, share actor settings with other people, and make changes by hand before pasting back into the level.
