From the course: Unreal Engine 5 Essential Training

Outliner and organization - Unreal Engine Tutorial

From the course: Unreal Engine 5 Essential Training

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Outliner and organization

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The outliner is one of the more important windows that you'll have in Unreal Engine. So I have my outliner docked over here, on the right, which is the default location. Now, if you scroll through, you'll see that everything in my current level is in the outliner. So if I want, I can select objects here. So if I select this cabin, for example, you'll see it highlights. I also can hide and show objects. So over here, I have a little eyeball. I can hide my cabin and maybe gives me some more room to work or whatever, and I can show it if I want. Now if you want to hide and show other things, you can use some of these filters here. And you can use the filters to basically limit what is shown in the outliner. It might make it easier to find things. You can also search for things. So if I were to type in the letters fen, it will select all of the fencing. Well, not so much select, but highlight all of that fencing where I can select it and work with it. Now if you have really large scenes, this can be very handy if you have a proper naming scheme. So I'm going to go ahead and back out of that. And then if I want, I can also use my settings here to basically turn things on or off as well. Now the outliner can also be used to create what are called hierarchies, and that's ways of grouping objects so that way they move around a lot more easily. So if I scroll down here, I'm going to select this SM_PatioChair1. And then I'm going to hit the letter "F", which will basically just zoom my camera in and frame it. Now you can see that basically it selected that chair. So when I select it, I can move it around. But more importantly, if I click on this little icon next to the name, this little triangle, you'll see that actually this chair is composed of multiple objects. There's the chair itself, there's the cushion, and then the pillows. Now, if this was not in a hierarchy, I'd have to select every single one of these to move it. But because it's in a hierarchy, all I have to do is select the parent and then I can manipulate those objects. Now you can create your own hierarchies as well just by clicking and dragging within the outliner. So I'm going to go ahead and zoom out a little bit and let's select these pavers. So I'm going to go ahead and select WidePaver and then just select on WidePaver6. It should select all of those. And let's say we wanted to make those a child of the cabin itself. So all I have to do is left-click and drag. And as you hover over each one of these, you notice how the name changes. So when I hover over the cabin, it's telling me it's going to move those to that cabin. And now I have a hierarchy. So if I select the cabin and move it, you'll see that the pavers move with that cabin. Now if you want to unlink a hierarchy, all you have to do is select the objects, right-click and click "Detach", and that will go ahead and detach those objects. Now, another way to create a hierarchy is to create what's called a folder, which is a way of grouping objects. So if I were to, say, select all of these fences. So if I select FencePost and shift select down to Fencing26, I can create what's called a folder. So if I select this and create that folder, what it does is it creates a null object here, this folder. And that allows me to select those objects as well as hide them. Now if I double-click on this, I can rename it as well. Let's just call this a FenceGroup. So now I have that FenceGroup, and I can select it, and toggle the visibility. So it makes it a little bit easier to control just by using folders. And that way you don't have to take objects and make them a child of another object. But as you can see, the outliner has a lot of capabilities. It's a great place to keep your scenes organized, and you'll be working with it a lot as you use Unreal.

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