Hi,
I need urgently an information about the future of the HTML5 export in the Unreal Engine 4. I have many customers who want a web export for realtime visualizations. I have always to say: Sorry, this is only be useful with UNITY at the moment. The current HTML5 export in the Unreal Engine 4 is unfortunately not recommendable.
There are too many problems and everything is too complicated.
We need urgently a good HTML5 output. It is one of the most important things at the moment. How are the plans for the future? Will the HTML5 output be improved?
another big issue is the x64 Browser requirement. Normal people do not use Firefox Nightly x64, so nobody could ever use it (except devs), even if you have a perfect build =(
HTML5 would really be an epic thing to have, especially for the architecture biz! But at the moment it is far from production ready. Very sad…
When I look at the roadmap, October/November says “HTML5 workflow improvements” - but I think x86 Browser support is the real issue and making it available in the binary install. Should both definitely be in the roadmap too I think - or is it not possible any time soon Epic? If not we should know.
Hi Marcel.
your are right. The x64 browser issue is also a big problem. I dont understand why EPIC is doing nothing at the moment to improve the HTML5 output. There are many competitors (especially UNITY) who are miles away. For this reason its not comprehensible for me why there is no development. The web is the future. And believe me: Every of my customers asked me if my realtime visualizations are also available as a web export. Its really a big market. And customers are willing to pay for this web export. It is a great pity.
The 64 bit requirement is only for development purpose. I’m developing an HTML5 project and it works like a charm on 32 bits. The trick for 32 bits is to enable the gzip compression. I normally pre-gzip nearly all large files (I host them in an Amazon S3 instance with CloudFront) to be able to serve them to a 32 bit browser.
The only drawback right now is that you have to use a GitHub build for it to work. Then it’s just creating yourself some scripts to automate the processes, it shouldn’t take you more than a few days of work.
Epic just released a demo of their StrategyGame for HTML5 and it works on a 32 bit browser. The whole workflow might be experimental but I had 0 issues with it so far.
I added a small guide on one of my answers about what I’m doing do perform a HTML5 build (Html5 build issue - Platform & Builds - Unreal Engine Forums ). The whole process can be achieved by calling the RunUAT build scripts (just check the UFE output log to check which parameters to use).
Hi Moss,
can you give me a short description what I have to do first when I want to export my project as HTML5? I do not understand the workflow with Github and Visual Studio. Unfortunately I did not find a good tutorial for this. In some tutorials they skip important steps. For this reason its not usable for someone like me who do not know much about programming. I hope that EPIC will make this process much easier in the future.
Hi JoJo,
thank you very much for your response. Normally I have no problems to learn new things on my own. In the meantime I am very familar with the Unreal Engine 4. But the main problem is the HTML5 output. I have no programming skills. Thats the reason why I am very happy about the Blueprint system. I dont understand the whole HTML5 workflow in the Unreal Engine 4. What I need is a tutorial which explains everything step by step. Also for people like me who dont know much about programming. So far, I cannot find a good tutorial for this. I installed Github, I have the sourcecode…But now I dont know what to do. Its really complicated when you are doing this the first time.
What problems are you having with HTML5? We realise we not there yet with HTML5 so I’d be interested to know what are the biggest issues for you guys?
The x64 browser thing should mainly be a development thing and mainly because of memory limits and how emscripten works. We are currently working on something to hopefully reduce the memory needs and this would help with 32 browsers on bigger projects.
, 4.6 should have HTML5 in the binary install I believe but I’ve not checked that myself. It may have been held up by last minute problems. It’s definitely on the TODO list.
OK, with little programming skills I can understand why it would be difficult to get HTML5 going. A step by step guide isn’t that easy to give and this is why HTML5 is still experimental. You’ll hit problems but ask and people will help. A lot of guides will assume some programming knowledge.
Once you’re able to run the editor, you need to build HTML5 for Blueprint only projects. For this you can use the Unreal Frontend. From visual studio you set your project to “Unreal Frontend”, config to “Development” and “Win64”. Then find the UnrealFrontend project in the Solution Explorer, right click and select “Build”.
Hi JoJo,
thank you very much for this information. There are a few elemental things I still do not understand:
When I want to export a HTML5 project, what are the main steps to get it working? As I know I should do this:
I have to download the source code and load it into visual studio.
I start the UE4 Editor in Visual Studio and I have to load my project.
The HTML5 export option is now visible and I can use it.
I have to use the Firefox 64 Bit to load my project.
Is there a step I forgot? I cannot understand why this is all so complicated. Why is EPIC do not integrating a normal HTML5 export to the Unreal Engine? I guess If you have programming skills this should not be so difficult. A script based output would be a first usefull step.
I have to download the source code and load it into visual studio.
I start the UE4 Editor in Visual Studio and I have to load my project.
The HTML5 export option is now visible and I can use it.
Build Unreal Frontend.
Use Unreal Frontend to build & export HTML5 project
I have to use the Firefox 64 Bit to load my project. - Not necessarily, other browsers can & do work. Firefox 64bit is the best option however.
Why is EPIC do not integrating a normal HTML5 export to the Unreal Engine?
Mainly, because it wasn’t ready but it is coming The plan has always been to make the workflow like other platforms
Hi JoJo,
thank you very much for this information. There are a few elemental things I still do not understand:
When I want to export a HTML5 project, what are main steps to get it working? As I know I should do this:
I have to download the source code and load it into visual studio.
I start the UE4 Editor in Visual Studio and I have to load my project.
The HTML5 export option is now visible and I can use it.
I have to use the Firefox 64 Bit to load my project.
Is there a step I forgot? I cannot understand why this is all so complicated. Why is EPIC do not integrate a normal HTML5 export to the Unreal Engine? I guess If you have programming skills this should not be so difficult. A script based output would be a first usefull step.
The plan has always been to make the workflow like other platforms