Did you know that you can edit multiple assets at one time using the PROPERTY MATRIX?

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This is something that everyone who uses Unreal should know about as it can help speed up potentially repetitive tasks. In the example below, we are performing a common gamedev action, setting our UI textures “Texture group” from World to UI.

This task is something that is relatively quick and painless when you do it once but when you have to perform it multiple times it starts to eat up time unnecessarily. This can easily be seen below where we have 45 additional textures that we need to tweak the settings of. That small quick task is going to build up.

Luckily for us, this is where using the Property Matrix to bulk edit assets can come in handy. Select a bunch of assets that you want to edit at the same time then Right-Click, go to Asset Actions then click on Bulk Edit Via Property Matrix.

This will open up the Property Matrix window. It may look a bit intimidating at first but it is relatively simple. The left-hand side is all the assets and the right side is the settings for that asset/group of assets.

The details on the right-hand side are the details that you would see if you opened up the asset individually, just stack in a single list instead.

You can now select multiple assets from the list on the left and edit them at the same time. In the example below I am changing the texture group from World to UI on four items simultaneously.

One thing that is helpful to know when using the Property Matrix is that you can pin settings. This is useful as sometimes there can be a lot of information displayed at once and you may only be interested in a single value. The little pins next to each setting can be clicked on/off to add/remove them as columns to the left-hand side list.

The property Matrix is an invaluable tool in making games in Unreal. I use it while working with Sounds, textures and it is super helpful when performing game balancing as well. Imagine for example you have a series of health pickups that each give different amounts of healing. Using the property matrix you can compare and edit the see the values side by side.

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Also, check out the parkour game I'm solo developing called Freerunners. Give it a wishlist if you like the way it looks!: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1430330/Freerunners/