(Unreal Plugin) LevelViz environment viewer

[AlexM]

Hey Mapcore 

I've been studying the Unreal engine on and off the last year or so and I've been learning about plugin development lately. So for my first plugin project I wanted to make something for architecture visualization or environment viewing. The idea to be able to create an interactive application that is very easy to use in regards to input and UI. I've been testing on my computer hating father so far.

The UI works on desktop, tablets and phones. In fact my initial vision was that an interior design firm could show a client a tablet and they could tour the project rather than look at static renderings or pre-rendered video files. There are 2 major features so far :

The interactive tour
The environment author simply sets up some cameras (known as vantage points) and then links them together with some custom tools and a interactive tour is generated. The UI is built up dynamically based on how the vantage points are linked together.

The plan view
The environment author selects the static meshes they want to contribute to the plan view. After that you can transition into a topdown plan view and the selected geometry will be rendered as an outline to look like architechtural plans. Selecting a vantage point from here will transition into the point.

Here is a video showing off a scene I setup with the plugin.

If you are interested in trying it you can download the plugin here. I put installation and usage instructions inside the zip file. Also if needed I can package up a small 4.12 project that people can look at to see how a scene is put together if the instructions are adequate.

Downloads 

Version 001 - http://mahwebspace.levelism.com/unreal/LevelViz/LevelVizRelease001.zip

In regards to the development. Please let me know what you think. Any feature ideas would be greatly appreciated. Even if you think it's just generally a bad idea don't hesitate to let me know

Here is a rough outline of what I have planned for the future. 

1. UI fixes. Right now it has issues on mobile devices. It works but the icons can be in the wrong place.
2. Consider a third rework of the UI where I use billboards in the scene rather than UMG widgets projected from worldspace
3. Front and Side plan views
4. Color and line styling for the plan view
5. Support for adding brushes to the plan view without converting them to static meshes
6. Make the plugin much simpler to use by eliminating all the initial asset linking steps. 

Devlogs

• LevelViz 001 Introducing LevelViz
• LevelViz 002 Vantage point system first version review
• LevelViz 003 : Adding a plan view and a custom editor
• LevelViz 004 : First version now available, creating a plugin and making a new UI

 

I also recorded some streams of me setting up an environment for with the plugin. I didn't realize my video capture software was also capturing the music for the videos so apologies for the music. Unbelievably, youtube doesn't seem to have a way to remove audio from a video.

 

 

Edited May 18, 2016 by AlexM