UE4 – Interesting tricks and shortcuts in the blueprint editor

Though I’ve been using the UE4 blueprint editor for a while, I still manage to learn tricks making me think “how I did without it…”. So here’s a selection of tips and tricks of the graph editor that made me save a lot of time.

Dragging connections

Just hold Ctrl when clicking on a link to drag it

If you hold Ctrl while clicking on a connection, you can drag it to another node. If you were still re-creating a connection manually from the source node to the target node every time you wanted to redirect a connection, this tip may greatly improve your productivity.

Breaking all connections

Hold Alt while clicking on a pin to break all connections

A trick to quickly break all connections of a pin is simply to hold Alt while clicking on the pin.

Spawning common nodes

For the most common nodes, there exist shorcuts allowing you to spawn nodes in one-click. Here are the shortcuts for the most common ones (knowing you can access to the complete list here).

So, to create control flow nodes, the default shortcuts are B + Left-click to create a Branch Node, S + Left-click to create a Sequence Node and F + Left-click to create a For-Each Loop Node.

B + Left-Click fror Branch, S + Left-Click for Sequence, F + Left-Click for For Each

Another interesting one is P + Left-click to create an Event Begin Play Node.

And finally my preferred one is simply pressing C to create a Comment Node.

Just press C to create a Comment Node around the selected ones

Straighten Connections and Align Left shortcuts

If like me, you like when your blueprints are perfectly organized, you may already know the Straighten Connection(s) tool which allows you to have a straight connection between selected nodes.

Unfortunately, by default, there is no shortcut for this option, but UE4 being well-thought allows you to define one. I explain how, and following these simple steps will save you a lot of time later.

Editor Preferences can be found in the Edit menu

First, we need to go in the Editor Preferences, then in the Keyboard Shortcuts section. There, we will enter “Straighten” in the search bar to find the line associated to the Straighten Connection(s) command. It’s possible to set two bindings, personnally I only set one on the H key (it’s quick and easy to use, and it’s not already bound to something else).

Once we have found the Straighten Connection(s) line, we can click on “Type a new binding” and press H

Then, we can do the same with the Align Left option I use a lot. Personnally, I bound it to the V key.

And now, it’s all set. We can test it in the graph editor. Just select the nodes you want to arrange, and press H (if you want to horizontally align the nodes), or V (if you want to vertically align the nodes).

Selecting nodes, and just pressing H then V

It does not automatically arrange all your nodes, but it is certainly a great help when you want to quickly organize things.

This concludes this small tutorial on small tips and tricks of the blueprint editor. Of course, if you have your own tricks, we’d like to hear about it, so feel to free to mention them in the comments.