If, like me, you do a lot of back and forth between Blender and Unreal, and you never could wrap your head around Unreal's viewport controls, this plugin is for you.
This project started as a fork of b3d-nav by ppmpreetham. It has since been significantly expanded to support the minimum set of features from Blender that I needed to feel comfortable working in Unreal.
This project is under MIT license, and is freely available on fab.com. It's given as is, you can use it, modify it for any purpose, without even mentionning me.
In return, don't expect me to take in any feature requests. I will eventually fix bugs, and probably enhance it as I use it myself.
So if you want an extra feature, you'll have to implement it yourself, and optionnally do a Pull Request on this repo, and I'll consider merging it.
- Download the plugin from fab.com
- Install via the Epic Games Launcher or extract to your engine's
Pluginsfolder
- Go to the Releases section on GitHub
- Download the latest release for your Unreal Engine version
- Extract the
Blend4Realfolder to one of these locations:- Project Plugin:
YourProject/Plugins/Blend4Real/ - Engine Plugin:
UnrealEngine/Engine/Plugins/Blend4Real/
- Project Plugin:
- Launch the editor
If you want to build the plugin from source:
- Clone this repository into your project's Plugins folder:
YourProject/Plugins/Blend4Real/ - Regenerate project files (right-click
.uproject> Generate Visual Studio project files) - Build the project
- Open your project in Unreal Editor
- Go to Edit > Plugins
- Search for "Blend4Real"
- Check the Enabled checkbox
- Restart the editor when prompted
Once enabled, you should see a Blend4Real toggle button in the viewport toolbar. Click it to enable Blender-style controls.
| Action | Key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Grab (Translate) | G |
Begin moving selected objects |
| Rotate | R |
Begin rotating selected objects |
| Scale | S |
Begin scaling selected objects |
| Axis Constraint | X / Y / Z |
Constrain transform to world axis (press twice for local axis) |
| Plane Constraint | Shift + X / Shift + Y / Shift + Z |
Constrain transform to world plane (press twice for local plane) |
| Confirm Transform | Left Click or Enter |
Apply the transformation |
| Cancel Transform | Right Click or Escape |
Cancel and revert to original transform |
| Numeric Input | 0-9, ., - |
Type exact values during transform |
| Relocate Pivot | Shift + Right Click |
Pick the scene to relocate the transform pivot (like blender 3D cursor) |
| Action | Key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Reset Translation | Alt + G |
Reset selected objects position to origin |
| Reset Rotation | Alt + R |
Reset selected objects rotation |
| Reset Scale | Alt + S |
Reset selected objects scale to (1,1,1) |
| Action | Key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Duplicate | Shift + D |
Duplicate selected objects and immediately grab |
| Delete | X |
Delete selected objects |
| Action | Key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Orbit | Middle Mouse Button |
Orbit camera around pivot point |
| Pan | Shift + Middle Mouse Button |
Pan the camera |
Configure how the camera orbits in Edit > Project Settings > Plugins > Blend4Real:
- Default: Use Unreal's default orbit behavior (Similar to Blender, orbits around the camera look at point)
- Orbit Around Mouse Cursor Projection (Default): Orbit around the point where the mouse cursor projects onto the scene
- Orbit Around Selection: Orbit around the center of selected actors
- Hold
Ctrlduring transform to toggle snapping (uses Unreal's grid settings) - Surface snapping supported during translation (when enabled in viewport settings)
- Every operation on actors can be Undone or Redone, using the Unreal Engine editor system.
These features go beyond standard Blender controls:
| Action | Key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Focus on Hit | Alt + Middle Mouse Button |
Focus camera on the point under cursor (Slightly different as it Zooms on the focal point instead of just looking at it like in blender) |
| Focus on Hit (Double Click) | Double Click Left Mouse Button |
Focus camera on the point under cursor (Sketchfab-style) |
- Level Editor: Camera navigation + Edition of actors, scene components and spline points
- Blueprint viewport: Camera Navigation + Edition of components
- Static / Skeletal Mesh, Material, Animation, Niagara editors: Camera navigation only.
Unsupported yet: Bone edition in the Skeletal Mesh Editor or Animation editor
Can be toggled on/off anytime via a button in the viewport toolbar. (if anything goes wrong you can easily revert back to unreal's controls in one click)
You might be used to blender, but maybe you are using specific bindigns in blender itself.
If That's the case you can configure them the same in the plugin settings
All keybindings can be customized in Edit > Editor Preferences > Plugins > Blend4Real under the Keybindings categories:
- Transform: Begin Translation, Rotation, Scale
- Transform Reset: Reset Translation, Rotation, Scale, Relocated Pivot
- Objects: Duplicate, Delete
- Camera: Orbit, Pan, Focus on Hit
- Confirmation: Apply Transform, Cancel Transform
The plugin will warn you if you assign conflicting keybindings.
This plugin compiles against Unreal Engine 5.7.1, but it should be possible to retro compile it to 5.6 if you import it in your project's Plugin folder.
- Status bar at the bottom displaying contextual shortcuts: It's something quite useful in Blender, but mostly if you're not used to it. if you're there I guess you already know the shortcuts.
box selection with LMB+drag: I decided to not do this one. In unreal it's hardcoded to LMB+Ctrl+Shift+Alt, unfortunately, just remapping it in not possible.
To have this it basicallt needs to be redone from scartch. The change is quite involved and would add a big amount of code for what would just be a key rebind. I figured it was not worth it.
Unreal has an experimental InteractiveToolFramework system, that makes me think that all this will drastically change in the future version, and will be a lot more modular than today. I'll revisit then.