UX Tools 0.10 Release: Tap to Place, Menus, and UMG support, now available in the UE4 Marketplace
Published Oct 20 2020 08:00 AM 5,162 Views
Microsoft

 

Today we’re shipping our third MRTK-Unreal release, UX Tools (UXT) 0.10, with a slew of new features to help developers place their content in their physical world, organize their controls into menus, and interact with existing UI. UX Tools 0.10 is compatible with Unreal Engine 4.25. 

 

You can now add the plugin directly to your project from the Unreal Engine Marketplace! To try out a sample app demonstrating most of UXT's key features, check out this download from our latest release on GitHub.  Release highlights are below, and the full details can be found in our release notes

 

Going forward, we’ll be releasing plugin updates at a bimonthly cadence, so you can expect to see a new set of features in December. Keep reading for a preview of the features coming next. 

 

uxt.png

 

Release Highlights

 

  • Distribution via the Unreal Engine Marketplace
  • Tap to Place
  • Hand Menu
  • Near Menu
  • Radio Buttons
  • Surface Magnetism
  • Unreal Motion Graphics support
  • UI Elements
  • Scrolling Collection (experimental)
  • Tooltips (experimental)
  • Cursor visual improvements
  • Bounds control improvements
  • Button, Slider, and TextActor conversion from Blueprints to C++

 

UX Tools is on the Unreal Engine 4 Marketplace- Add UX Tools to your project by opening the Epic Launcher, navigating to the Unreal Engine Marketplace, and searching for Mixed Reality UX Tools!

 

marketplace-circle.png

 

 

Tap to Place- Use either a hand ray or your head gaze to place holograms on the spatial mesh

 

Tap-to-Place.gif

 

 

Hand Menu- Attach UI to a user’s hands for frequently used functions

 

HandMenu-compressed.gif

 

 

Near Menu- Create UI that follows the user, and can be pinned to the world

 

nearmenu.png

 

 

Radio Buttons- Ensure that only one button in a group is checked at a time

 

radiobuttons.gif

 

 

Surface Magnetism- Direct holograms to stick to a surface, whether in-game or to real world walls

 

surfacemagnetism.gif

 

 

Unreal Motion Graphics support- Enable Unreal Engine’s built-in widget components to respond to hand interactions, both direct and far

 

umg.gif

 

 

Scrolling Collection (experimental)- Scroll through a collection of 3D objects as if interacting with a touchscreen

 

scrollablelist-compressed.gif

 

 

Tooltips (experimental)- Annotate objects with labels and anchors

 

tooltips.jfif

 

 

HoloLens 2 Style Bounds Control- Easily resize, rotate, or translate 2D and 3D objects

 

boundscontrol.gif

 

 

Visual Logging- Visualize joint positions, proximity, and pointers to aid in debugging hand interactions in the editor

 

visuallogging.png

 

Additional improvements include more polished cursor visuals, as well as conversion of the Button, Slider, and TextActor components from Blueprints to C++.

 

See the full release notes for more details.

 

What's coming next? 

 

The focus for our December release will be preparing MRTK-Unreal to scale: adding cross-platform support, putting UX tools, graphics tools, and examples into separate plugins, and building a foundation for OpenXR support. Cross-platform support has been a top ask from developers, and we hope that providing components that work across AR and VR platforms will enable us to expand the audience we're able to reach.

 

  • Cross-platform support with Unreal Engine 4.26: Windows Mixed Reality, Oculus Quest, and more
  • Text box + keyboard
  • OpenXR support
  • UX Tools Examples plugin
  • Graphics Tools plugin

 

Try it out! 

 

UX Tools Game– a HoloLens 2 sample app showcasing all the key features of UX Tools. The latest GitHub release contains a pre-packaged appx.

 

UXT620x300WhiteText.png

 

Additional samples– check out the full list of open source sample apps built by Microsoft and Epic Games using Unreal Engine and UX Tools.

 

kippysescape.jpg

 

Ready to grab the latest plugin? Search for Mixed Reality UX Tools on the Unreal Engine Marketplace to add it directly to your project.

 

To view documentation on Mixed Reality UX Tools, see the source code, or file an issue, please visit our GitHub repository.

 

Thanks,

 

The MRTK-Unreal Team :smile:

 

MRTK_Unreal_UXT_Banner.png

4 Comments
Iron Contributor

Accessing the plugin via MarketPlace is more convenient for us developers. Thanks for bringing all the new changes to the platform :hearteyes:

Brass Contributor

Waouh !
Congrats to everyone who work on this update !
I'm curious about the "ScrollingObjectCollection" you showed on the post, is this normal that the clipping box scale is not the same as the background ?
Seems like the objects vanished when they arrived at clipping limit instead of being cut off like the MRTK for Unity do, Unreal haven't the stuff to do it easly?

 

Nice work guys!

Copper Contributor

Thank you for all the features! I will be waiting for the December release.

Microsoft

I'm curious about the "ScrollingObjectCollection" you showed on the post, is this normal that the clipping box scale is not the same as the background ?
Seems like the objects vanished when they arrived at clipping limit instead of being cut off like the MRTK for Unity do, Unreal haven't the stuff to do it easly?

Hi @Kent1LG,

 

Thank you for your kind words! You are correct that the Scrolling Collection doesn't currently clip objects which are on the border of the being fully contained by the background (back plate). This is something we plan to address and partly why the Scrolling Collection is still tagged as experimental.

 

We hope to introduce functionally for Unreal that is similar to clipping primitives within MRTK-Unity. 

Version history
Last update:
‎Oct 19 2020 11:47 PM
Updated by: