I’d like to introduce a plugin I’ve been working on to you - a 2D vector graphics library called Definitive Painter based on Google Skia which is the thing that powers rendering in Chromium, many Android apps and so on.
Grab it on the Marketplace
Definitive Painter extends the existing UMG system by adding new vector based widgets. You can draw anything from rectangles to complex shapes, all properly antialiased using MSAA. Definitive Painter supports 4 types of gradients, animations, procedural shadows, hit testing for any shape, and much more.
Everything is realtime, 100% vector and integrates seamlessly with UMG. Definitive Painter will draw a simple chart to be inserted into your existing GUI or the whole HUD for your project.
Because of its vector nature, you no longer need to switch between UE and your DCC tool in order to tune colors, widen contours, etc. You can do everything without the need to ever leave UE. Oh, Definitive Painter can also import SVGs.
The plugin is available for Windows UE 4.25 - UE5 (when available, until then the highest supported version is 4.27) on Marketplace. You can follow the development on Twitter and YouTube
#neumorphism is a cool looking soft UI. You’ve probably already seen that in some websites. You can now create it with #DefinitivePainter right in #UE4. No external tools needed. Ever. !
In Definitive Painter, you can now draw a text that follows a path! It’s even possible to make individual characters warp themselves to fit the curvature of the path - see the right half of the image.
And done! A simple signal generator. It’s the GUI that matters the most because that’s what you can create with Definitive Painter. Everything is 100% procedural, vector based and real time. No need to ever leave the Unreal Editor while working with Definitive Painter or create Materials. DP does everything for you. All you need to do is to feed it with parameters .
Definitive Painter plugin will be soon available on Epic Marketplace !
Definitive Painter can alter any shape using one (or more) of the predefined effects… procedurally in real time for any shape you can imagine in a few clicks
…right in your game UI in Unreal Engine!
Definitive Painter can draw any shape you can imagine… procedurally in real time in a few clicks
…right in your game UI in Unreal Engine!
Don’t see the shape you’ve always wanted to draw in your UI? Believe me, Definitive Painter can draw it too!
So glad you continued showing off your project. I’ve been following your updates for a while now and its all so fascinating. I must ask though, what encouraged you to start your development of this library?
Also, you’ve done a wonderful job at showing what each sample does and you’ve displayed it in such a minimalistic and sleek style. Love it!
I wanted to draw a couple of charts in another project. I wanted tons of cool effects and functions like those you can see here Examples - Apache ECharts There’s no way you can draw charts like that in vanilla UE.
For a while, I thought I could just integrate aforementioned ECharts through CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework), but the UE CEF integration has been broken since I can remember and is utterly slow.
It turns out that stuff in CEF is rendered using Skia, a standalone library capable of drawing all that fancy stuff you see whenever you open a web page in Chrome browser. All you have to do is to tell Skia what to draw (and how), wait for it to do its magic and retrieve the final image.
Once I was done with this incredibly daunting task (although the final solution is rather simple, it took me almost three months to find), I thought it might be a good idea to make it user friendly and make it available to anybody who wants to draw 2D vector graphics in their UI.
That’s how a need to draw a couple of curves became a complex plugin, today called Definitive Painter.
Another tutorial on how to use Definitive Painter is here!
This time, you’re gonna learn about the four cornerstones of the plugin and how the plugin works.