Hi wlawski, we’re aware of the problems with old pages. The Scalability reference dates back to version 4.9, so a lot has changed since it was published. We’re in the process of auditing and updating all our docs, and this is definitely one of the docs due for revision.
Hi Nuravictus, I’ll pass along your request to the docs team.
Hi S-ed, thanks for the feedback. I just checked, and that broken link has already been fixed, and the correction will go live the next time we publish.
Hello Rectus_SA,
In an effort to assist us in replicating this behavior, would you be able to provide us with steps to reproduce the issue? Additionally, if you had any other information about the resolution size of the monitor and the web browser you are using to view the documentation page, that would be useful information for us to attempt to identify and remedy the issue.
Thanks.
Hello Sonictimm,
In an effort to assist us in replicating this behavior, would you be able to provide us with steps to reproduce the issue? Additionally, if you had any other information about the resolution size of the monitor and the web browser you are using to view the documentation page, that would be useful information for us to attempt to identify and remedy the issue.
Thanks.
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Could you add a print this page button? Whenever I find something like this and want to make a copy for reference later, Its formatting is not at all set up for this. Thanks.
For the loading behavior, it happens consistently every page load on Firefox 88.0 using a 2650 x 1440 screen, as long as the browser window is wide enough to not auto-hide the navigation pane. Testing with Chrome, it does not have the same sliding behavior, but it still has a jarring page-blanking effect when loading new pages. Chrome also does not have the inconsistent scroll speed in the navigation pane, but all the other issues still seem to apply with it.
Hello, thanks for the reply.
Upon further testing, it does not happen with every page load, only about 20% of the time. Usually it seems to happen when I haven’t been to the docs yet, and I go in for the first time on a given day. Sorry for my overzealous report, it bothered me since I’ve been seeing it happen for so long. When it happens, reloading the page does not help, I always have to resize the browser window to fix it, and then it remains fixed for a while, sometimes hours and sometimes days, until it happens again. I do not regularly clean my browser cookies/history on this machine.
It seems to have something to do with the web browser width, as it doesn’t happen when I have the browser maximized on a widescreen monitor.
In the case I sent a screenshot of, as the screenshot shows, the browser window was approximately 1207x986 plus the address and title bar. I can get a better screenshot and more resolutions when it happens in the future if you’re interested.
Web browser is Google Chrome Version 90.0.4430.85 (Official Build) (64-bit)
I also experience the issue on Opera on a different machine which I don’t have with me right now.
My Windows display resolution is 2560x1600, DPI Scaling 100%
Thanks,
-Timm
For this page:
Stationary This mobility is reserved for Actors that can change during gameplay but not move.
- For Static Mesh Actors, this means that they can be changed but not moved
It isn’t clear what “changed” means. Also, where the term “moved” is used, doesn’t that mean rotated or scaled as well? (i.e. transformed)
On this page:
There is a link at the bottom which is intended to point to more developer-oriented info on Components, but it just refers back to itself.
Hi recentlyafish, you’re correct that reference makes no sense on the page as it is laid out currently. This is another old doc that is in need of an update as part of the ongoing doc audit. I will flag it for review.
Hello tiburbage, thanks for the feedback. Both of the pages you pointed out to us are old pages, due for an update as part of our doc audit. I’ll pass on your comments about the first page to our team, and see about fixing that broken link myself.
No information on converting between std::string <-> FString, std::string <-> FText, TCHAR <-> FString & FText
Ones with std::string should be at top in special place, because there are tens of thousands of libraries that use std::string and only one engine that uses FString.
I’m surprised that there is still no API for convenient conversions and I have to write ALL_OF_THAT8(*just to convert between some common types
Hello Rasie1,
We may log a feature request for you, however, please be advised that our resources are focused on higher priority issues. We have no estimated time on if or when this request may be implemented. If you have your own conversion code that you would like to contribute to the Engine, we encourage you to do so by following some of our Community Pull Request Standards.
Thanks!
Clothing Tool | Unreal Engine Documentation
The video that’s supposed to play in Step 4 of Painting on your Cloth, gives out an error saying: No source video was found.
Hello, all. Although I am experienced in a couple of other engines, I am very new to Unreal Engine. Technical analyses and other engineering documents, often over 100 pages in length, have been a large part of my job for more than 20 years, so I appreciate the effort required to design, write, edit, and most of all, maintain, documentation. Over the past several several weeks I have spent many hours in the Unreal online documentation, so I wanted to share some constructive (and mostly positive) feedback with the documentation team.
Notwithstanding my usual desire to carefully organize, the points below are in no particular order. I assume that if the team chooses to act on any suggestion here, it would be split out into a task in Jira or Bugzilla or whatever tool the docs team uses.
- The quality and depth of the documentation is exceptional for the software industry at large. Topics are presented in depth and with extensive screen captures and example walkthroughs, allowing learners to perform the steps in the editor. For experiential learners such as myself, this is a tremendous benefit.
- Unlike so many companies in recent years, you clearly care about editing and proofreading. I am a notorious “grammar cop” in my small company, and I subconsciously proofread even when I am simply trying to absorb content. Yet I have found few grammatical or spelling errors in this documentation.
- The balance between theory and practice seems well-chosen in most areas, although the best balance point will vary because every reader’s mind works differently, and every reader has a different learning objective. Theory is important to assimilate and generalize the specific examples to one’s own project, but too much theory can overwhelm newcomers.
- I appreciate the banner at the beginning of many sections indicating the version of Unreal to which that section applies. One small suggestion would be to add text to those banners identifying whether that is the release for which the documentation was written or updated, or if that is the first release that contained this feature. Since the banners seem to be all formatted identically, I presume this would be just a constant text label from a template. A short phrase such as “Updated for 4.22” or “Feature added in 4.22”, for example, would suffice.
- The tree-oriented menus work extremely well, but it would be nice if these could be more dynamically related to the content pane, in JavaScript-enabled browsers. The need for a full page refresh to select a different topic makes it cumbersome to jump back and forth. For instance, while reading about ABC there might be a mention of TUV, and the reader wants to look quickly at that and then return. This is possible in the existing ToC template, but it is a little inconvenient. Perhaps the user profile settings could offer a choice of modes for menu behavior, since the existing method may work better with the “back” button in some browsers.
- If it is feasible, and if it would not create a maintenance nightmare, some additional menu depth might be helpful for certain topics where the finest-grained menu entry still links to one extremely long page.
- Occasionally the game-centric focus of the documentation (admittedly, appropriate for many or most readers) seems to downplay aspects that are vitally important to non-game developers (of which I am one). For example, the Cloth simulation section covers only clothing and assumes one is painting cloth properties onto an existing garment mesh that is part of a character model. Of course this would apply equally to draperies in an archviz scene, and it’s not difficult to make that leap. However, that section was less helpful to me because I wanted to learn how to create a simple mesh using primitives or brushes in Unreal and then add cloth physics – for example, making a flag or banner from a plane. The information is present, but this workflow isn’t specifically covered.
- The tutorial on learning Unreal from a Unity background is excellent and directly relevant to my journey. I would like to suggest that the team update the specific section “UE4 Blueprint Classes Can Be Extended” to reflect recent improvements in Unity. Unity now does support nested Prefabs (quite well, actually), and Prefab Variants negate the cumbersome workflow described in this section. (I am not saying the section is unfair; it simply does not reflect the latest Unity features.)
- Unity developers can use an inheritance-based design pattern, or a compositional pattern, or a combination of both. It would be useful to explain which of these is preferred in Unreal, or if they are often combined, how (in broad terms) a Unreal developer might wish to choose the right pattern for common situations.
- Also in the Unity to Unreal tutorial, it would be helpful to explain if the Scene Components nested under an Actor’s Root Scene Component can also be the Scene Components that are part of other Actors. This seems to be implied but is not explicitly stated or negated.
- Once again in the Unity to Unreal tutorial, please consider mentioning the performance impact of Material Instances as compared to Unity’s Materials. In Unity, each Material added to a Scene requires a separate GPU draw call, whereas Material Property Blocks allow one Material to be multiply GPU instanced within a single draw call. It would be helpful to learn, early on, the “best practices” in Unreal for how freely to use Material Instances within a level.
- There is a sentence fragment in the last paragraph of “Writing Event Functions” in the Unity to UE4 tutorial. The fragment begins with “Where as” (which should also be “Whereas”).
- An important topic for Unity to Unreal migration is the behavior of the Editor if files in the Content directory tree are modified, added, renamed, moved, or deleted from the operating system’s file manager or an external creative tool. How does Unreal resemble or differ from Unity in this regard?
- I haven’t yet found any official documentation on using external editing tools with specific asset or file types. Notably, I would like to use JetBrains Rider for source editing, even if Visual Studio is needed for compiling C++. It’s not reasonable to expect Epic to document specific external tools, of course, but it would be helpful if there was generic information about how external tools can be invoked by default from the Content Browser.
- Offering both topic-oriented links from “Understanding the Basics” and role-centric links from “Getting Started in UE4” is a fantastic choice of learning paths for newcomers. Well done!
I hope it’s not out of line to offer this many comments as a relative newcomer. My intention is to bring the newcomer’s perspective, specifically, which is why I have refrained from offering half-baked remarks about the deeper technical aspects of this excellent documentation resource.
Once again, thanks to the Unreal documentation team, and the community members whose feedback has helped refine their work, for crafting superb documentation that is both approachable for novices and comprehensive for experts.
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Hello syscrusher,
Thank you for providing us a comprehensive and organized post on your constructive criticisms and praise. I’ve shared this with the members of our Documentation Team, and we have begun to internally log our Jira regarding some of the typo fixes and additional page information requests.
We hope to continue to improve our pages in conjunction with evaluating the valuable feedback provided by you and our other members of the Unreal Community.
Thank you!
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Hi ShinraCorp, we have a fix for the missing video issue, it’s going to be published as soon as we finish checking it.
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[Page URL]Map Containers in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation
[Description]Just now encounter with a small misleading demo picture in the docu. of the ‘FIND’ node of BP. The two different output pin node shares the same picture in which a yellow circle focusing on the same pin.
Get Started with UE4 - Editor Basics Section
A small typo here:
Blockquote The
.uprojectfile is how you create, open, or save a project. You can create any number of different rojects and work on them in parallel.
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