Web Graphics

Development Platform & Builds
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1

Hi all,
I am very interested in using Unreal Engine for the development of web graphics.

It would be used in order to build a navigation system, buttons, banners, or similar structures with mouse over and click effects.

The goal is to have inline graphical elements generated by Unreal, and seamlessly integrated into a web page.

These elements should have no borders or anything distinguishing them from the normal flow and color scheme of the page.

Does Unreal Engine have the flexibility to generate such content?

Currently I am unaware of any demos other than windowed games or simulations, having somewhat relatively large download sizes.

What I would like is to generate small interactive content, keeping it lightweight, but also harnessing the advanced capabilities of the Unreal platform.

2

This would be complete over-kill for Unreal Engine … you are better off using existing web-technologies like Bootstrap or plain old JavaScript and CSS to do this task. Although possible, the download size would be a hindering factor and the HTML build has to run in a panel on the browser. You would have to make a lot of CCS tweaks to the container of the Unreal Engine Panel in order to portray a seamless border.

IMHO … this is a bad idea and is not something you should consider doing with Unreal Engine. There are tons of lightweight javascript animation libraries that you could use.

3

I think its a great idea and worth pursuing to answer that question of building a website with Unrealengine. I only have one question. When do you plan to start?

4

Ah, interesting. I appreciate your guys input.

Primarily I am concerned with integration of custom 2.5D/3D animated effects and motions within a web page.
Reactions to user input, particle systems, flowing grasslands, clickable links, although limited to small areas within.
The graphical complexity level of the elements would be much greater than with javascript and css alone, populated with models, lighting, textures.

My foundations are in C++, CSS, HTML, Javascript and Blender among other random things, although I have not yet used them all together.

The Unreal Engine is one of the fringe technologies I have not yet begun to use, and I have chosen it over Unity and Blend4Web due to its flexible licencing requirements.

Webassembly is another. I have loaded the Zen Garden demo built with Unreal and Webassembly, and was thoroughly impressed.
The developer’s guide on the Webassembly site fortells a string of events that must take place to make it work correctly, and I am not sure if this applies directly to using it with the Unreal Engine.

The Blend4Web platform began as my first choice, but so far it is shady in what source files exactly must be shared with the free version.
I have posted there as well, asking a direct question about this, so far without response.
Too free is not always a good thing.

It sort of seems like hacking the Unreal Engine /w Webassembly to make quick loading graphical web page elements is all that is left.

Even possible? I sure could give it treatment by keyboard fire, but would it be successful even with a whole team working on it?

5

@zombog,

My goal is to develop a website/pages with UE4 for my VR Online Asset Store. My approach: deploy UE4 in HTML5, hosting the HTTPS Server. I’ve elected to use JSON encode/decode for all data-exchange and interprocess communication between UE4/HTTP/MYSQL. I’m not fiddling around with traditional server-side/client-side Web script. Buttons, links etc in the UE4 App are UMG, Triggers, etc. If server-side scripting is required the UE4 App its sent to the HTTP server for processing.

I did consider the use scripting (unreal.js) & markup language (JSON) to Dynamically generate Static Mesh Actors, Particle Systems, UMGs, etc in the UE4 App. I also have the option to use my previous client-side scripting/markup engine experience to craft my own. At this point, I consider this approach to be over-kill. I’m experimenting with all of the above in developing a Mutli-user World/Entity Construction System, I will deploy to HTML5.

6

It sounds like you are saying that it is possible to use Javascript from within the Unreal Engine Editor to control the many different graphical components and properties without C++. Real-time rendered text forms that can read and write from data stored on the web server. Sounds nice.

Thanks for the info… I’m going to install Unreal Engine soon and try a first build for the web. I’ve been reading up on it and watching general tutorials.

I would like to find out what the output file(s) are that compile to load the project in a web browser,
also how to control the size of the output window when it is displayed,
and the way to specify what loading looks like, the window style, and all other styles for that matter controlling its appearance on the page.

Lots of specific questions are likely to be added to this list. I’m not aware of the existence of reference material on these subjects.

What I’m going for initially is a small rectangular area with white background and small, simple, animated graphical elements that respond to the mouse.
Ultra basic and instant load time.