This is a “texture browser” utility widget for UE5.5 that presents materials in the style you’d expect from a level editor in the 90s: as square thumbnails.
Unreal normally presents materials in the content browser as lit and mapped to a sphere. This isn’t useful for much. When you’re making a level, you want to actually see the images you’re working with. So this plugin presents them that way. It looks like Hammer’s texture browser. You can buy it on Itch.
Cool features include:
- Click on a texture to select it in the content browser
- Recently-clicked textures are kept in a Recent panel for quick access
- You can search the entire project or limit the browser to a specific folder
- You can search the browser, and save favourite searches
- You can change the size of the thumbnails
- Non-square textures are fit to the thumbnail size without stretching, or they zoom to fill it (cropped) when you mouseover ’em
- Texture names are displayed on the tile
- Hover over a texture to reveal its resolution
- Optionally, only display material instances, not base materials
- You can specify which material parameter names you want to use to represent your material in the thumbnails
- Preferences are saved between sessions
How’s it work?
First, it gathers all the materials in a folder (or in your whole project). The first time in a session, this can cause the editor to hang briefly.
Then, it tries to find the right texture to show you from each material: either the first texture it finds, or one that matches one of the parameter names you specify (eg you could enter: basecolor,diffuse,albedo and it would use the first texture it found in a parameter slot containing one of those names).
Then, it makes a thumbnail for each of these in a scrollable grid. If you click on one, it selects that material in the content browser. Easy!
If a material does not contain any textures, for now it just shows up purple, with a note saying so.
Will you add support for an earlier version than 5.5?
Probably not! That’d be annoying to do.
What if I have a bunch of textures I want to generate materials for automatically?
I have a tool for that too: https://impromptu-games.itch.io/auto-material-instance-maker-tool
Why is the price what the price is?
You’re asking why it isn’t twice as much? I can make it twice as much. That’s no problem.
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