9 BlueprintTips You Might Not Know About
Increase your UE4 blueprint knowledge
Unreal Engines blueprints are already pretty easy to use. But some features are a bit overlooked, even though they will make your life easier.
Make to function / macro
Keeping order in your graph is a crucial point when working with blueprints. Functions and macros help with that, and good news! You can create functions and macros automatically from selected graphs, including inputs and outputs:
Select graphs →Right-click →Collapse to Function / Macro
Reparent blueprint
Sometimes you need to reparent your Blueprint to another blueprint. Mostly this happens when you do refactoring. Instead of tidily copying and paste your Blueprint to another, you can use the Reparent blueprint function.
File →Reparent Blueprint
Generate C++ code
Since blueprints are ten times slower than C++, performance intense Projects might benefit from converting Blueprint to C++ code.
It should be noted that the generated code is not meant to work with, as it gets very messy.
File →Developer →Generate Native Code
Dragging execution flow
By holding down the left CTRL-key, you can move the execution flow from one node to another.
Shortcuts & key bindings
Many processes can be accelerated by using short cuts and key bindings. Here is a complete cheat sheet of all key bindings you can use inside the Blueprint editor:
Breakpoints
Blueprints have breakpoint support, which can help you very much while debugging.
Right-click graph →toggle breakpoint
There is also a Debugging window where you have an overview of all breakpoints and their values.
Window →Debug
Find references
Find out where a variable is used can be a challenging task, especially on big blueprints. Luckily, the blueprint editor can show you where a variable is used.
Right-click variable →Find References
Validated getter setter
Getters for possibly not valid values can be converted to validated getters.
Right-click getter →Convert to Validated Get
Find in Blueprint
When your projects grow, it is sometimes hard to find the functionality you already implemented. Before you start to search manually through all Blueprints, use the Find in Blueprints functionality!
Here you can search for Functions, events, variables, etc. across all blueprints.
Edit →Find in Blueprints
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