I am curious if anyone has explored the highly volatile early access to the UMG tool in 4.2?
If so, share your thoughts, impressions, reactions, etc.
HUH…That is why I asked because i had the same results…
I saw a thread the other day (try searching UMG) in which a developer said that after enabling UMG, you would then create a special type of blueprint which allows you to create the logic and access the visual designer (if I understood correctly). Of course, who knows just how functional this is at present.
I think I’ll play with that later today…
I had to Google it. This snippet of information was posted by Nick Darnell in the Mothership Entertainment UI thread](UIX: My work toward a user-editable, Blueprint-compatible UI system - Feedback & Requests - Epic Developer Community Forums):
Cheers,
-D
Use Unreal Engine 5.3 Documentation | Unreal Engine 5.3 Documentation instead of forum search!
However, this thread is first that pop up =_=
Yeah I can’t make any sense out of this - no new nodes or anything… I checked this: UIX: My work toward a user-editable, Blueprint-compatible UI system - Feedback for Unreal Engine team - Unreal Engine Forums (At the bottom).
I think because so much of this is still in flux it hasn’t made sense yet to document any of it. However, if anyone on the UMG team would like to pop in and perhaps explain how to create and utilize some basic widgets, we’d love you forever. 
Hey,
You have to run the editor (UE4Editor.exe, not the launcher) with the argument -umg.
You’ll then find a new Blueprint entry “Widget Blueprint” under “User Interface”.
Cheers
AH Genius…command line…yeah so that was pretty ridiculous on my part to over look that so thank you for your help. Got it up and running and it looks functional. Thanks for your help! I just wanted to get a head start so I could see if I could make any sense out of it.
So yeah it is up and running but what calls it to the screen? I built a little sample of buttons and such (following the test UI sample - created by the button) but I am not sure how to display it in the game. Any luck singleton?
I dunno what version made it into 4.2, but the way you get them to show up in the game is in the level script currently. Is to use the CreateWidget call blueprint node, then call Show on the widget that is returned. The version you guys have I think is still based on actors, so you just drop the widget blueprint into the world.
It’s awesome you guys are so eager to play with UMG, but I’ll warn you the version I think that made it out in 4.2 will definitely make assets that wont load, and will likely crash the editor in 4.3 / or current Master. But please, play away 
I’ll keep an eye on this thread to see what sorta thoughts you guys have. I totally expect there to be a million and one bugs, and so many horrible workflows with the current version.
Also, running with UMG causes Persona to crash on load
Cheers,
Nick
So yes in the 4.2 - you just drop the widget into the level and it is visible. I just grabbed a test map and dropped the test UI in and it worked.
&stc=1
Woot! Just stoked to not only see progress - but to have something tangible to play with.
Forgot to mention that you’ll just need to put it anywhere in the scene but I see you already figured it out, you can also play with the controls, bind them to functions (getters), sound triggers …
Note : I’ve noticed something weird, if you hit simulate/play then escape to exit, the mouse cursor is blocked inside the scene window and cannot be moved anywhere on the editor. You’ll to hit Alt+Tab and come back again to the editor to be able to move the mouse freely outside the scene. I think I saw that bug on the v4.0 too.
Yeah - there’s still a lot of work to make the mouse interplay a lot cleaner. Alt+Tab is how I get out of it as well.
still want my free scaleform for ue4 ! #sadface
Would be nice to have the UDK version from Scaleform in UE4, yep
So I have been playing around and this is definitely a cool idea.
NickDarnell, I am curious if some info, video, screenshots or anything can be presented here so we can see progress? This is the sole feature that stands between me and finishing my game.
Maybe in the future, I just significantly reworked how the UI is edited so that each modification doesn’t require a complete rebuild of the Blueprint (which is very slow and not conducive to dragging things around), which is forcing me to rework how all the widgets update the underlying Slate widgets they own. So a lot of ground work is still being laid. There’s also several Slate runtime changes that are being worked on, we’re going to add 2D transforms, Material support (at least emissive lighting)…etc. I’ve also started working on a new version of SCanvas that works a lot better in a WYSIWYG environment, where you can dock/anchor widgets. We’re also working on how we’re going to support animations and such so you can have stuff in the UI be more alive.
Lots of stuffs in the works, but these wont be overnight improvements, UMG is a many month project. So if UI is all that stands between you and finishing your game, you may just want to hammer it out in Slate directly if it’s simple enough it may not be terrible. Some super simple UIs don’t even need Slate, like Tappy Chicken’s UI, is just done with 2D meshes.
One thing that I’d be interested in seeing are the kinds of Game UIs users are interested in building. If you or anyone has any mockups, with sort of a detailed breakdown of all the things they’d need UMG to mechanically be capable of doing, that would be nice to see, because it will give us more test cases as we develop UMG.
Cheers,
Nick
Wow, are you the same awesome Nick Darnell who made Oxel?
UMG is looking cool, looking forward to play with it.
Hah, yeah that’s me