One of the most common problems tech artists are in need of solving is that of delivery; how do we get our tools into users' hands? There are various answers to this question, and each use case demands a different implementation: for asset-centric tools, a context menu in a content browser tends to work best. For more generic tools, some kind of launcher is generally preferred. In my day job, I work with Unreal Engine, and this is a question I run into a lot, and one I've had to solve a few times. I recently started getting more stuck into this problem however, and I thought I would share what I learned. I should add that I received some assistance in this from friends at Epic Games and the Technical Art Community, who were kind enough to ask around internally at Epic for the solution to the final bit I was stuck on. So let's dive straight into the code, as that's what you're probably here for. Note that all code in this post has been tested on Unreal Engine 5, but ...
A space where I dump my Tech Art Brainwaves into a somewhat structured shape.