Manipulator Tools Plugin is ALMOST ready for first release!

Things have been wrapping up quite nicely as I finish up a ton of cleanup and usability features for the Manipulator Tools Plugin. Here is a bit of a taste of what it looks like to manipulate Vectors, Transforms, and Booleans.

The idea is pretty simple. Do you have variables that you'd like to edit in the editor on the actor itself as a nice way to visualize what you are changing on the fly? This is where the Manipulator Components come in handy. Here is the hierarchy of the test tank blueprint.

Component layout for the "tank" you see above.

You'll notice, that there are 4 green icons with _MC. These are the Manipulator Components and each one has settings to control what shapes it can be, what property to attach to for editing, and a bunch of other settings like constraints, offsets, and a few other extras. What makes this really neat is you could essentially do what the Control Rig Plugin does but for ANY ACTOR. ANY BP, ANYTHING that can have a component added to it and be added to the world.

Example of what the settings looks like right now. I chose to make it struct based for easy copy-paste functionality from one manipulator to the next.

Right now, I am wrapping up some helper functions and also getting it to be a bit cleaned up code-side. Then I will document how to use it, setup examples, and look into distributing the plugin either via the marketplace or github. I don't know whether or not I am going to charge for it yet, but it is a CRAP TON of personal time that I have dedicated so far and supporting a plugin is definitely no small task. Please keep that in mind that if I do charge for it, it's mostly because that money will go into the time to maintain and support it.

Very minimal blueprint logic needed to make that tank do what it shows.. in-fact most of that is just making the "Look at rotation" logic work.

Lastly, the entire system is based off of the current "Show 3D Widget" functionality in the editor. If you are unfamiliar with this please feel free to watch the tutorial video on how to use those. Then, get angry at the fact that you have no control over how they look or work like I did and get pumped for the MANIPULATOR PLUGIN!

https://youtu.be/IS79tKyjdHc?t=9
Tutorial on how to use the current UE4 Property Widgets

Have a great day.
<3 Zuko

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Drew this on the plane to GDC a month or so ago.