Level Editor User Guide

Document Summary: Guide to using the Unreal Level Editor.

Document Changelog: Created; maintained over time.

Introduction

The Unreal Level Editor is the core editing tool in UnrealEd. It is in this editor with which worlds of levels are created - levels that are built from BSP and Static Mesh geometry, as well as Terrain. They contain Lights and other Actors, AI Path Nodes, and Scripted Sequences.

This document will give an overview of the Level Editor interface and how to create levels.

Using the Level Editor

Opening the Editor

The Level Editor is open when you open UnrealEd. See the UnrealEd User Guide page for more details.

Creating a Level

For an introduction on creating a simple level, see the Creating Levels page.

Level Editor Overview

Editor Layout

Controls

Mouse Controls

For a list of mouse controls see the Editor Buttons page.

Keyboard Controls

For a list of keyboard controls see the Editor Buttons page.

Hot Keys

For summary of how to bind editor hotkeys and create new editor hotkey commands, see the Editor Hot Keys page.

Working with Levels

Placing Actors

Detail Level

Right-click the selected Actors, which will bring up a context menu option that allows you to set the detail mode for them (low, medium or high).

On the View menu, there is a detail mode option with 3 checkable options: low, medium and high. This will filter your view so you only see Actors that are at or below the selected detail mode. Choosing low on this menu will display only the Actors that are set to low detail mode. Choosing medium on this menu will display on the the Actors that are set to medium or low. And so on.

Scripting

Editor Performance

The editor can be extremely slow in large levels, especially when there are a lot of Actors on the screen. Here are some settings you can tweak to improve editor framerate...

For Single Player levels, the single best option is Level Streaming Volume Previs.

That will only show a few streaming levels around you, and there will be a big loading hitch when new levels stream in. Sometimes you need all levels to be visible though, that's where the rest of these options come in handy.

Distance to far clipping plane

self-explanatory; a useful quick-fix. It's the slider bar next to the Redo button.

Turn off realtime update

self explanatory.

G mode

hides all editor debug information. Results may vary.

Have lighting built

not always possible but unbuilt lighting will make the editor much slower.

Unlit movement

self explanatory.

Unlit view mode

helpful when lighting is unbuilt.

Show dynamicshadows

helpful when lighting is unbuilt.

Show selection

This show flag defaults to on, which allows BSP selection to be visualized. When you don't need to see BSP selection, turning this off can make the editor quite a bit faster.

Show scene captures

Turning this off will give a decent speedup to scenes using them.

As a last resort, restarting the editor can help. This can be especially helpful if there are driver-related issues.