I have come to the end of my ability to go forward in using unreal engine to implement an application I wish to create.
I have had success in creating procedural generation of objects and meshes in my tests, and wish to now create a windowed user interface so a user can enter inputs of options and values to generate procedural content using the unreal engine. This relates to this question I asked a couple of days ago
I looked at the option of creating a windowed interface using code given by a small module called SlateView, but found it to be out of date and requiring some modification of adding a lot of module names in the build.cs file to get a lot of .h files in a LaunchEngineLoop.h file recognised. Even then, a macro called IMPLEMENT_APPLICATION failed, and I abandoned this in frustration of any attempt to get this to work and experiment with so as to understand it and expand it.
I am now left with only one other option. To have an unreal engine editor like interface which is my first preference, but in all likely hood the most difficult. All I what to begin with is a skeleton of the Unreal Engine editor. Nothing more than an unreal engine editor like window with a game viewport to display results, and some bank empty menu options. No Plugins, None or very few unreal engine editor functionality. Just enough of an editor window to start to create an editor like application all of my own making.
Can this be done? Is it permitted to do what I have described above? If so, how does one begin or set up visual studio project to do so?
I do not want to create a plugin, or extend the existing editor, so please don’t ask me to do that. I Just want to try and create a stand alone independent unreal engine application to proceduraly generate content.
Well, for the moment I have decided to try and create a series of plugins after all as it seems the best and only option to do. It seems to me that is how the UE editor is constructed and designed anyway.
Other application you can check out, it is UnrealFrontend. It is doable, problem is it’s not documented at all and there really no easy UI pipeline to build those as Epic don’t expect people to do this kind of stuff as UE4 is mainly for games.
As if you can do this, you can, but it really depends how you gonna distribute it. If it’s part of other plugin it will bound with plugin rules, if it’s stand alone i would expect it would fall the same category as game distribution, as technically you can make a game that does exact same thing. Those programs still are technically UE4 program just without Engine module.
You can dive in to EULA, it written in quite simple language so don’t be afraid to check it out:
Other problem is if you planing to distribute that UE4 Marketplace, rules there are quite strict and im not sure if you be able to push such a program there, as marketplace primerly been done for plugins.
Another problem is Unreal Engine UI style and graphics, those are copyrighted and can not be distributed with your program.
You need to asks yourself, if you really need standalone program for what you trying to do, since it indeed a lot easier to make plugin.
If you plan to do some 3d rendering in that program, i think it’s lot better to make it like a game, as it is a lot easier to render something with Enigne module in and a lot easier to make such program as normal unreal project. Note that UE4 even allow you to override UEnigne class, a main brain of the engine so you can go quite a lot low level if you need that.
Not sure if this plugin can help but it maybe worth checking out… since it can separate the 3D Viewport into its own resizable window, and UMG based you UI in their own windows.: