This kind of UI redesign is long overdue. UE4 just feels very claustrophobic, cluttered, unnatural and unpleasant to work in.
The current UI has no flow and is very unintuitive to use. Most of the menus make no sense and things are simply not where you would expect to find them. The interface looks like it has been designed by a 5 year old, not the mention the UX aspect of things.
Some menus are left empty with too much wasted space, while others are just packed with stuff and crammed beyond any sense…
I really hope there will be some kind of UX and usability improvement in the near future, which UE4, being an industry leading engine, frankly deserves!
YESSS !!! I’ve been saying this for ages, it’s very upsetting to see people/aficionados refusing that obviously smart decision. We’ll soon be in 2021 for christ sake and we’re using a windows 98 design type for UE4…
Do you think there’s any hope that will be a thing in UE5 ?
@Hoodelali Hopefully - yes. Probably - no.
Strongly dislike the flat / non-descript icons. The existing UE4 ones are much more readable at-a-glance thanks to use of colour and 3D etc. Existing UI also seems to waste less space than the “Modern” version. I also think the modern design leaves a lot to be desired in terms of separation of elements.
“Flat” UI design routinely has readability issues. Looks great on websites, but is terrible to work with long-term. Readability is more important than how good it looks . We need to use these tools 8-16 hours a day at times, I don’t want to be struggling with icons at that point. UI readability honestly feels like it peaked in the 90’s compared to what is popular now.
Also, Small Toolbar Icons setting FTW.
@ Flat Design Works perfectly fine for apps.
Autodesk apps, Adobe Apps all use flat design. Even Unity.
Seems Epic slowly moving towards it as well.
But it’s a matter of “taste” no one should impose their own vision on others. This is why originally I wanted to make it “themeable”.
I prefer the 3d look and “““clustered“““ design. I hate opening an application and googling which tab opens what and then this and that just to find an action that I need, and god forbid need to do couple of times. Unreal is one of the only software I didnt have to google to find where things are cause it made click very fast. Details panel right, content browser bottom, tabs on the left, where is the issue? I personally dislike unity theme and even photoshop because like mentioned readability is so bad in the long run and its always hidden inside tabs of tabs.
i like the UI how it is
this.
it appears alot of people demanding a new UI just dabbled very recently and demand the engine to be adjusted to what they re used to (blender, PS, unity)
like mentioned i hate those small flat icons that will barely tell me what those do or what it will open while the current UI will easily tell me at glance what its supposed to do. Not like a clean tab in tab in tabs style UI and epic and many other devs have worked with the engine and delivered great games. If the UI was really as terrible, then alot of studios who use UE4 would ve pushed them to overhaul it, which they havent which means its perfectly fine.
i love this flat ui
Yep have to agree. In a nutshell the 3D icons are both dated and distracting in the UI.
Speaking as someone who has used both Unity and Houdini over 10 years. Feels like stepping back in time to the 90s every time I open the editor!
Please update the UI! Or at least give users the option to switch between a ‘3d’ and ‘2d’ icon mode.
Unity got their stuff together recently, UI theme wise, but Houdini is still on equally as bad level as UE4, if not worse. They have absolutely brutal amount of various gradient, bevels, panel separators and so on cluttering the entire window. Given that human eyes work primarily as edge detectors, this makes the UI look way, way more complex than it really is at a first glance. And they use pretty much the exact same 3D shaded theme for their icons.
Unity 2020 is a nice example how a modern, clean theme should look. Even Amazon Lumberyard did a good job with the UI overhaul. So did the new CryEngine. Blender also looks ok, but is diminished by incredibly fractured UI customization settings which make it borderline impossible to create your own theme in under two days.
But mentioning Houdini as one of the examples that are better really isn’t appropriate. As I said, Houdini is as bad if not worse (in this very specific area of UI theme design).
I stumbled across that post, and I just wanted to mention that I created a plugin to revamp the unreal theme to a more modern/flat design.
Of course, I can’t do everything from a plugin perspective, and it’s still a work in progress, but it’s available here:
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I think they’ve listened to us, just saw the UE5 overview and what I see, finally content browser, left panel are hidden and overall the UI looks flat and modern)) even some ideas are implemented pretty close to the concept that was made almost 5 years ago!) that’s good.
Thanks, Epic games team for that, I can’t wait for it.