Chapter 3: Unreal Engine Fundamental Operations

3.1 Creating and Saving Your Project

If you just launched the Engine, you can easily choose a template to create a new project in the starting panel. If you have already opened a project, hover the cursor above File inside the menu bar and select New Project… in the drop-down list. To save a project, select Save All in the same drop-down list.

3.2 Basic Operations on an Object

By default, when you have your project opened in the Engine, you will see two panels, Outliner and Details panels vertically on the right-hand side. The upper panel, Outliner, shows all objects in the current level. The lower panel, Details, displays many properties after you select an object. To escape from the selection, press the Esc key on your keyboard.

There are some useful shortcuts to modify an object or change your view inside that virtual world, but they are different across different OS platforms. You can also edit settings for shortcuts. To see or modify those settings, hover your cursor above Edit in the menu bar, select Editor Preferences, and then click Keyboard Shortcuts under the section General.

3.3 Utilizing Assets with Content Browser

To utilize assets, click Content Drawer in the bottom left corner to open the Content Browser, and simply drag an asset from the Content Browser to the Level Viewport. If you choose to both download Starter Content when installing the engine and select Starter Content when creating your project, you should be able to see the Starter Content folder in the Content Browser, which contains many basic assets. You can also import your own assets using Import depending on the form of your asset files.