🚲Unreal Quickstart

Setup your Unreal project

This page introduces the Anything World plugin for Unreal Engine 5 and gives indications on how to install it and start using it. This plugin allows you to browse for static and animated 3D models in Unreal and spawn them directly in your Unreal projects.

The Anything World plugin for Unreal Engine 5 is currently in early access and its features should be considered experimental and may change significantly in later updates. Please take this into account when considering using this plugin in your specific use case.

Requirements:

Unreal Engine 5.0, 5.1, or 5.2
Unreal C++ Project
Visual Studios 2019
Anything World Account Details
Anything World SDK

The plugin has been tested in using the Visual Studios IDE and Visual Studio Code however additional testing is required to ensure it is well supported in other platforms.

If you're completely new to Unreal it might be a good idea to learn a bit about the Unreal interface. The documentation provided by the Unreal team is a great place to start learning.

Once you've got the basics down, follow this guide and see how to get started with creating 3D content in Unreal!

Create your Anything World Account

Create an account through the Anything World website to get access to the Anything World SDK for Unreal.

Our REST API requires a unique developer API key for authentication in order to allow make APIs calls.

The Anything World SDK requires the project to be created or converted to a C++ project in order to compile successfully.

If an existing project containing the AnythingWorld SDK fails to compile on startup, first remove the SDK from plugins folder of the project, open the project, and generate a C++ class. Once the project has been successfully converted, users may install the Anything World SDK within the plugins folder.

Set up the Anything World SDK

Step 1:

Download the latest version of the Anything World plugin for Unreal Engine 5 (not the Unity package) from your account page in Anything World’s website.

Step 2:

In your file browser, extract the “AnythingWorld” plugin folder from the zip file.

Step 3:

In your file browser, copy the “AnythingWorld” folder and paste it inside the “Plugins” folder of your Unreal project.

Example: if your project is called “Example”, it should have a top-level folder called “Example”, with folders like “Content”, “Plugins”, etc., and “AnythingWorld” needs to go inside “Plugins”. If you don't have a “Plugins” folder, create it first.

Step 4:

Open your Unreal project in the Unreal Editor of Unreal Engine 5. In the main menu bar, navigate to “Edit” → “Plugins” to open the plugins available in your project. In a section called “Other”, you should see the Anything World plugin and tick the plugin’s checkbox.

Step 5:

You will then see an “AnythingWorld” section in the main menu bar of the Unreal Editor. You can click it to show “Settings” and “Anything Search”. Click “Anything Search”.

Step 6:

Log in to your Anything World account. Internally, this action will grant the plugin access to your Anything World API key, which is necessary to interact with our server.

Step 7:

Now you should be able to see the landing page of the Anything World browser, which you may want to dock. You can see the featured models on the top, and other relevant sections of models below, such as those with the highest number of likes and the most used models.

Step 8:

You can search for specific models by entering a query in the text bar and pressing enter. After a small time, results will appear, and you may want to filter and sort them with the available options if you want.

Step 9:

Clicking on any model will add it to your current level, where you can manipulate it as any actor. If the model’s thumbnail in the browser had a play icon in the top left corner, it means it is an animated model, so you will be able to see it playing animations when you play in the level.

You can access the animations, mesh, materials and textures in the “DynamicAssets” folder within the plugin’s content folder, via Unreal’s content drawer.

If the Plugins Folder does not appear automatically you can enable the Plugin folder to display by selecting the settings option on the Content Drawer and enabling 'Show Plugin Content'

Step 10:

For the model to be able to move through the world with a simple default random movement behaviour, you need to add a NavMeshBoundsVolume to the level.

Adjust the location and scale of the volume to cover the walkable surface of the map. You may want to turn on the navigation visualization option pressing “P”.

Step 11:

If you now press the play button, you will see how the model moves around!

After you clicked to place the first model, you may notice a “AWMeshManager” was added to the scene. It controls the placement of models in a grid-like fashion, and exposes as editable properties the number of columns and the spacing between rows and columns, that you may edit based on your preferences, as well as the grid origin location.

If you want to include really large models in your project, you will need to add an additional supported agent in your project settings within the Navigation System section. We recommend you this profile to ensure that all large models in our database will work correctly.

One example of a large model in our data base is red_dinosaur#0000.If you try to load and run a large model, you will see the AWCharacter flickering at the spawning point trying to find a path.

If you only need static models, you can skip this warning. This topic only affects animated models.

If you need more information about the navigation system in unreal, you can consult it in its documentation. https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/navigation-system-in-unreal-engine/