Here is something that can help you save time.

Did you know that you can make some general texture tweaks in engine without ever having to leave the editor?

Obviously, it’s better to make proper changes, but sometimes, like in a game jam you just need to quickly make a change. This can help you save time as switching programs can be a big time burn.

If you would prefer to watch the video version, check it out here

In my example below let’s imagine that this icon is used in many different places across my project’s UI.

While developing my game I realise that I would actually prefer it to be on a lower opacity. I could go through my entire project, finding each version of this icon and changing its opacity to match this new style that I am after. However, this would be time-consuming and not very efficient.

Another way we could do this (without ever having to leave the engine) would be to make use of textures Adjustments. Find your texture, open it up and on the right-hand side scroll down a little bit till you see the Adjustments section. Here you can play with values that will affect the texture globally. You can play with: Brightness, Vibrance, Saturation, RGB Curve, Hue, Min Alpha, Max Alpha etc.

To continue my example from before. I can set the Max Alpha to 0.5, to reduce the overall opacity of the texture. This affects the texture instantly and I do not even need to reimport.

Now if I go back to my menu you can see that all my icons are at that lower opacity. The good thing about this is as you can see from the colour picker we still have that full range of 0-1 of the Alpha channel available to play with.

The whole process seems to be exactly the same in the Early Access version of Unreal Engine 5. The only real difference seems to be the general UI changes, the flow/process remains the same.

Again it’s normally worth doing things properly but sometimes, like in a game jam you want to be able to tweak something quickly without having to leave the editor. Another situation I do tend to use it for is quickly testing different values to see if it is something that would make it look better, if it does seem to be the right direction I would jump out to photoshop and make a more permanent change.

If you want more quick tips & tricks FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @cbGameDev

Also, check out the parkour game I'm solo developing called Freerunners. Give it a wishlist if you like the way it looks!: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1430330/Freerunners/