Welcome everybody in this series of videos talking about editor essentials, we are going to be covering some of the basic concepts you need to know about when working with the Unreal Engine. Those of you that are already familiar with working with the engine have worked with it before you can feel free to skip this entire series of videos on editor essentials. Those of you that are new to the engine stay right here because some of these concepts that we're going to be talking about in the following videos are important to know and understand. So in this particular video, we are going to be taking a look at the level editor. The level editor is what you see here in Unreal Engine four. So before we start talking about the level editor, let's talk about Unreal engine itself.

Unreal engine itself is a suite of tools for game developers to design and build games in Unreal Engine is an editor that is comprised of many other editors. Now if that sounds confusing, stay with me. So what you see here is what is considered the level editor this entire interface. But there are also editors for doing things such as building particle effects for constructing how sounds ultimately sound in your game, the sound cue editor, there is also an editor for meshes for animations for building menu screens, all different types of things. This video, we're going to be focusing on the level editor and we're going to start our discussion here on what you see right here in the middle of the editor, which is known as your viewport. Now this is your level editing window and this is where you do most of your level construction.

This is where you can add things such as props and lights to your level, and generally just make the layout of what your world or level looks like. In the upper left hand portion of the screen, we have what is known as the most panel. And right below where it says mode right here, you're gonna see five different tabs. And by default, we are within what is known as placement mode. In this particular mode, you can simply drag and drop actors into your scene, such as a cube. Or maybe I want to select my lights tab right here.

And I can place a light in my level to illuminate that as well. Let me just delete those out right away. But there are other modes that you can kick the editor into as well. And I have this particular scene up in my viewport to help show off what some of these other modes can do. I'm not going to delve deeply into them, but just to show what they can do. This next mode that you can put the editor in is called paint mode.

And if I rotate my camera view around over here, what you can do is it'll allow you to paint on a given mesh in your level. So this is what a rock mesh Typically looks like when we bring it into our level. And what I did before I started this video is I actually painted this mesh by coming into paint mode. So that's what paint mode can do for you. The next mode I want to talk about is this mode right here which is known as landscape mode. And if I rise up right here, you can see that I have this giant swath of land beneath me undulating as well as a lake.

So to create some giant outdoor landscape such as this some undulating terrain such as this, you would come under landscape mode. Next up, we have foliage mode. What fully is mode will allow you to do is quickly place a lot of foliage such as bushes, grass, trees, that sort of thing on or in your level. It's mostly used in conjunction with landscapes, but you can actually place a lot of foliage on meshes as well. Next up, we have what is known as geometry Edit Mode. And what geometry Edit Mode allows you to do is alter primitive shapes that you have brought into your level.

Jumping back over to place mode over here, we have this tab over here called geometry. And this allows you to bring basic geometric brushes into your level. Now, if you don't know what those are right, now, I'm going to demonstrate the difference between a geometric brush and a static mesh. So I've got a few cubes here. Two of them. Actually, let me delete this one out.

Here is a geometric box of brush in. This is a cube mesh. Now you may say, Well, what is the difference are both roughly the same shape they both look boxy? What's the difference? Well, with a geometry brush, you can come into geometry Edit Mode, and actually alter how this thing is shaped. For example, I could select a face right here and make it longer.

Or select it like this and make it wider. Or I could select a vertice E which is what is known as one of these corner type things right here and I could pull that up to create all kinds of interesting shapes. So think of geometry editing mode is a way to kind of create your own meshes and models if you so desire. Usually, this is used in a process known as gray boxing in design. Okay. Now, if you had noticed while I was hovering over these different modes, there is hotkeys to kick you into any of these modes.

For example, if I wanted to jump over into landscape mode, I could simply click on it or do like the tooltip says and do shift plus the three key and that will jump me over there as well. Now the next area of the editor I want to talk about is this area right down here known as the Content Browser. Now this is a super important area of the editor because this is where you can find Many, many, many of your assets that you want to place within your level up here. Now before I do that I'm still in landscape mode, I'm going to jump back over to place mode. So I can demonstrate placing some of these objects from your content browser directly into your viewport here. So before I do that, I just want to show you that the Content Browser is structured very similar to any file folder directory that you may find on your computer.

And in fact, if I go into my Windows Explorer right here, you can see that this project that I currently have saved to my desktop, I've drilled down into my Udemy basics project here into my content folder content content into my Starter Content folder, Starter Content folder. And you can see that this directory of folders right here in Windows Explorer, matches this directory of folders right down here in the Content Browser. Good. To know, so let's see some of these assets within the Content Browser. So under under my Starter Content folder here, I'm going to go into my prop folder. And what I can do is find some props that are located within here and simply drag and drop them into my levels.

Here is a chair, for example. And you can also find things like materials. So maybe instead of this brick road right here, I'm gonna go fancy and maybe I want a gold road, like so. Or maybe this text hex pulse that looks kind of cool, right? I can also drag in something like a particle effect. So if I come under my particle folder, I can find some fire right here.

Place it up in the air. That's pretty cool. All right, and within this content browser, I'm going to demonstrate for you quickly how Unreal Engine is actually an editor consisting of others editors. So you see I had this fire particle right here. If I double click on this, I'm going to actually open up the current VFX that is short for visual effects editor, which is currently known as cascade as of this date, although they're switching to a new particle editor known as niagra very soon, but this is an editor where you can actually compose how this particular visual effects looks. Some other type of editors that you can find right here, we've got this materials editor, so if I was to double click on this ground, ground moss, yeah, ground loss, that's what that's called.

You can see that this is an editor consisting of many tools, nodes, etc. to put together this particular asset by coming in under the audio folder, and double click on this guy right here, this fire cube. You can see that I have now opened up something known As the sound cue editor, which is used to construct how this sound ultimately sounds and one more example here, if I go under props, I can double click on this chair and this is an example of the mesh editor. And within here you can define things such as if it has collision or not or what the default material is on it as well. Okay, lastly for this discussion in the level editor, part one, I want to demonstrate how when you click on an object within your level, and right now I've got this chair selected, you've got something known as the Details panel over here on the right hand side.

And this will allow you to modify some properties about whatever actor you have selected. actor is any type of object in your scene. In this case, I've got a chair mesh, this is known as a mesh. So for example, if I wanted to modify some properties about it, let's say the scale Let's change It's x scale, x meaning this reddish color right here, x of one, that is this direction right here, this reddish arrow. So I'm gonna make this longer by changing this value from one to two. Well actually, the reason they all change uniform leads because I had this lock selected.

If I click this Reset to Default arrow, I'm going to change that back then unclick this to make them not scale uniformly, and I'm going to change this to two. Now I've made a lounge chair, maybe I want to make it extra wide like a couch. So I'm going to change this y value, which is this greenish arrow right here. So I'm going to make this wider by changing this to three. And maybe I want to associate a different material with this chair, maybe I want a solid gold material. So what I can do is click on this little drop down arrow right here, do a search for gold and now I've got My solid gold chair which I've always wanted.

Okay, so that's gonna wrap up this this initial discussion on the level editor. We will see you guys in part two where we're going to talk a little bit more about the level editor. We'll see you then.