Hey Everybody!

I know that this topic has been quite viewed and also I decided to update it a little bit. The first part of this post will concern the progress I am making about the plugin itself... Yes, I am working of a plugin for UE4. I hope I will succeed in doing so and that you guys will be able to use it to make the best GUIs ever seen in games and Real-Time applications with UE4!

At first, here is how I am approaching the issue right now. This is a first approach and there will probably be some others with the time.

At the moment, I am planning on making am Actor Component derived from the StaticMeshComponent class that will take a plane as default. Why this ?
Then I will use NoesisGui to do a RenderToTexture on this plane and display the GUI.
It will allow to have true 3D UI to embed with your actors, players etc.

I might work after this on a plain 2D GUI that will do some direct draw. It will probably be easier.. But we'll see then. I hope to be able to progress a lot in the next days.

On a later step. I hope to be able to get the 3D mesh directly from NoesisGUI itself. It would be the most accurate way to get the UI in full 3D. and then use some of the UE4.4 feature such as mesh bending on it to allow to make some effect on it etc..

As of today, here he what has been done:

I spent a lot of time searching for how to do it in a way that would be working the best within UE4 ecosystem but also with NoesisGUI itself.

Then I started to design the plugin core class and interface. At the moment, the initialization of NoesisGUI in UE4 is complete, you can say that now it only needs to be ordered to draw. Well. I will be working on that very soon. ;D

Today, I started to work on it again, here is what I've done:

I created the component class and made it to be sure that it will be spawnable as a component. It have its own XAML category which name will probably change as the structure of everything changes as I get a better grip on everything.
It can be spawned and shows a very basic with default material plane right now. You can put more than one instance and even already place then in the front of the camera of a pawn and link it to the camera. It will follow the camera rotation etc.

A lot of things are still to do. But well. I will do my best to give you a nice plugin to use

To summarize:
Done:

• Plugin that can be turned on/off in UE4 editor
  Init of NoesisGUI in UE4
  Creation of a XAML component that displays a 3D plane
  Possibility to embed the component in whatever actor you want
  NoesisGUI Error handler has been set as UE4 log under a NoesisLog category
  Fix the "trying to create UI renderer on the component before the module has finished loading"
  Partial NoesisGUI resources "auto-build system"
  Xaml Loading

Todo:

• NoesisGUI Render to texture for Unreal Engine 4
  Custom material for the component
  2D GUI "direct draw"
  Bending effect (more comfortable for UI when near the Camera)
  "secure" the noesis init with the RHI as for now it only works with DX11
  Custom material support
  Use of NoesisGUI meshes instead of a plane
  Render of the XAMLs on the basic plane
  Finish and "secure" the "auto build system"
  Data binding
  XAMLs Event support
  Translation of XAMLs event into UE4 custom events
  [...] (more to come certainly somedays. )

I hope you'll like it. And I hope I'll be able to make it. I learn a lot at the same time I am doing it.

Erio.

EDIT: If anybody has advices or anything to say about it (finding the time too long to develop it, wondering about something on how it will work or whatever might the question be!). You're welcome.
I promise you that I do not bite!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Old Message:

Hello everybody,

Have anybody heard or ever tried to use NoesisGUI with the Unreal Engine ?

Does somebody have an idea if this might be possible or not ?

Thanks !

It should be really easy following the Integration Tutorial.

We can help with all the probems if anyone is interested in trying than integration. For now, we cannot do it officially (low demand).

Thanks!

If there is 'any' demand for this, i'm willing to put it to work. Although the Slate Gui system within UE4 is pretty good, it's no match for xaml, and noesis.

Thanks for helping!

I was planning to give it a shot once Noesis supports DX11.

Good! Last time I had access to the UE code DX9 was supported. It was deprecated in the latest versions in favor of DX11?

Yeah, UE4 has some major rewrites. They've made a spirited effort to drop as much cruft as possible.

Thanks DigitalKarnage

I think exactly the same. Plus i want to use a totally 3D UI. So i really need it. :p

jsantos

Well. I will try when i get a few pixels of time. Probably next week !

I hope that you'll do it Officially.

UE4 is very new. And i think it might be a very good opportunity to strike for NoesisGUI

Sorry for the delay in updates with the Integration progress, was having some some personal issues getting in the way of hobbies. Will start working on it this week.

As you know, Noesis has made incredible strides in bringing xaml based ui's to games, which i'm am highly grateful for. Thanks Guys, but it's time we start working on how to bring Noesis, to the masses. I think with a single / simple plugin for unreal, we could really put Noesis on the map, far above ... well that other Webbased UI toolkit. If i were designing a web based game, still wouldn't pay that absorbent asking price to use it.

If your still interested in the project or wanna help, pm me.

Sure, we are interested in this collaboration!

But I think that we need to have the DX11 port ready before that, don't we?

Thanks for your positive attitude.