Forums | NoesisGUI

Hello Everyone,
I am a developer for Hangar 13 and I am currently exploring the capabilities of Noesis Studio with the Unreal Engine Plugin and establishing what cross disciplinary collaboration could look like using it.

I have been quite impressed and believe it would facilitate to onboard artists and designer as a easier replacement to have a more unified approach to prototyping (coming from doing prototype in UMG for example).

I currently use the version NoesisGUI-UE5.6-4.0.0b5 that was provided on this forum.
There are still some open questions (apart from the few blocking crashes that I encountered, listed after):

One of the biggest drawback of the usual Blend+Unreal approach was that each class needed to be duplicated for having a viable Editor experience. Due to that, I really like the fact that I can create a Data Only blueprint that I can then add a template for in Noesis Studio.
It creates a similar experience to prototyping that UMG would provide out of the box. Making onboarding of artists and designer a bit simpler.

• However, It does feel like it may become quite cumbersome to have to add manually all types that we defines as data type
  (this could be automatised and populated on our end using either a folder or an an abstract BaseType, so maybe not that much of an issue)

• The Drop down to select DataType (in DataTemplate, data Structure, Property type) could benefit a "Type to filter" field as even on an empty project, the amount of types offered can be quite long.

• In a DataTemplate that has a DataType, Trying to bind values doesn't offer any of the existing field as a suggestion so I need to manually type it. Following Dorian's video, I assume this may be a bug as it doesn't match what I saw on Dorian's videos on youtube.

• Another feedback for me would be that, coming from a pure Blend+noesis Stack. I don't fully yet grasp the concept behind Components. By that I mean what they should be used for, what do they replace as a concept (Datatemplates / UserControls, something else?)

Aside of this, I have encountered few issues:
Bugs :

• Doing Ctrl+S while editing a Resource doesn't save the xaml (it did it sometime but I haven't pinpointed the case where it works and when it does not).

• Given the following structure :
  Code: Select all

  <Grid>
    <TextBlock/>
    <StackPanel></StackPanel>
  </Grid>

  Trying to Drag/Drop the textblock in the stack panel in the Navigator window did duplicate the Textblock and make it impossible to delete (closing/reopening studio fixed the issue, duplication was still there but I could drag drop correctly without duplication)

Crashes:

• Trying to create Data Set of a Blueprint type in Noesis Studio crashes the whole Unreal editor (whereas if I create a Data structure based on the blueprint type and then create DataSet of it, it works)

• If I Move/Rename or any of the type referenced in the asset :
  • Unreal editor cannot be launched anymore until I delete the problematic *.uasset, Modify the xaml manually and re-create the uasset by dragging it into the content browser as Noesis studio doesn't know this file stopped to exist.
  • This also happen if I don't delete, in DefaultEngine.ini the list of class that don't exist anymore
  • This also happen if a setter w/ Notify node gets fed a instance of a type that was made incorrect (lost parent, changed namespace etc). Instead of erroring, it crashes the editor and only a full revert of the change will undo it) [ crashing at K2Node_NoesisAssignAndNotify.cpp:279]

Overall I want to say that I am very excited to see how that tool could change the way we approach doing UI with Noesis, those crashes and bug are for now a bit of a blocker to use that tool at scale (but as it is at a beta stage, it is understandable.)

Thanks for the excellent feedback!

The Noesis settings which allow you to import Unreal types as Data Structures in Studio will be removed in the next release. It is an experimental feature, and is not ready for production. We will be revisiting this functionality in the future, but it is not currently in the roadmap.

To use data in Studio, you need to create Data Structures in Studio, which will match the data types/Blueprints you have in Unreal. These Data Structures are stored as XML files in the .noesis/data/structures folder in the project, so you could also generate these entries using a number of methods.

The Drop down to select DataType (in DataTemplate, data Structure, Property type) could benefit a "Type to filter" field as even on an empty project, the amount of types offered can be quite long.

We have plans to implement a searchable combobox for all of our drop down selection fields.

In a DataTemplate that has a DataType, Trying to bind values doesn't offer any of the existing field as a suggestion so I need to manually type it. Following Dorian's video, I assume this may be a bug as it doesn't match what I saw on Dorian's videos on youtube.

This should work, does this issue also occur with Data Structures created in Studio?

Another feedback for me would be that, coming from a pure Blend+noesis Stack. I don't fully yet grasp the concept behind Components. By that I mean what they should be used for, what do they replace as a concept (Datatemplates / UserControls, something else?)

Components is also an experimental feature, which is not ready for production. They were intended to be "code-less" UserControls which can be created in Studio, allowing you create new controls with custom properties. We are currently exploring this workflow, and it is likely to change in future.

The Noesis settings which allow you to import Unreal types as Data Structures in Studio will be removed in the next release. It is an experimental feature, and is not ready for production. We will be revisiting this functionality in the future, but it is not currently in the roadmap.

This is something that slipped through in the Unreal implementation and is not possible in Unity or C++. Our Unreal samples do replicate Blueprints in Studio.

The next version will not support using Blueprint classes at design time in Studio.

Sorry about this.