Unreal Engine is an incredible world-building platform that allows you to render incredible photo-realistic digital assets for everything from video games to blockbuster films.
While this platform is one of the most powerful and capable of its genre, there is one thing that you can’t really escape no matter what 3D rendering platform you use: the hours of tedious work that building and rendering digital assets requires.
Thankfully, there are some techniques to help you work more efficiently inside of Unreal Engine: keyboard shortcuts.
Shortcuts save time because they allow you to access tools and features right from your keyboard without having to click through lengthy menus or leave your workspace.
The less time you spend searching through menus for tools, the more time you have to focus on the details of your project.
We’ve compiled this handy Unreal Engine keyboard shortcuts guide to help you learn all the shortcuts that Unreal Engine has to offer and significantly speed up your workflow.
55 handy Unreal Engine shortcuts
There are lots of different shortcut combinations that work with Unreal Engine, but first, let’s start with the basics.
*Note: These are all based on the standard qwerty keyboard
Basic editing shortcuts
When you’re just getting started and beginning to develop your skills and use basic tools in Unreal Engine, work faster with these shortcuts:
Copy: [Ctrl + C]
Cut: [Ctrl + X]
Paste: [Ctrl + V]
Delete: [Delete]
Undo: [Ctrl + Z]
Redo: [Ctrl + Y]
Select All: [Ctrl + A]
Clear Selection: [Esc]
Move Selection: [Up/Down/Left/Right Arrow Keys]
Find in Content Browser: [Ctrl + B]
Browse Tabs: [Ctrl + Tab]
Open Level: [Ctrl + O]
Play/Simulate: [Alt + P] or [Alt + S]
Show Nav Mesh: [P ]
Zoom: [Mouse Wheel Up/Down]
Save in Blueprint: [Ctrl + S]
Find within Blueprint: [Ctrl + F]
Find in all Blueprints: [Ctrl + Shift + F]
Group/Ungroup: [Ctrl + G] or [Shift + G]
Pin/Unpin: [Right-Click on “Group”]
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Level editing shortcuts
As you begin building in level designer, use these level editor shortcuts:
Menu: [Right Click]
Save All: [Ctrl + S]
Set Bookmark: [Ctrl + Number Keys]
Jump to Bookmark: [ Number Keys ]
Hide Selected: [H]
Unhide All: [Ctrl + H]
Snap to Floor: [End]
Snap Pivot to Floor: [Alt + End]
Snap Bounds to Floor: [Shift + End]
Snap Origin to Grid: [Ctrl + End]
Select all Adjacent Floor Surfaces: [Shift + U]
Select all Adjacent Slant Surfaces: [Shift + Y]
Select all Adjacent Surfaces: [Shift + J]
Select all Adjacent Wall Surfaces: [Shift + W ]
Select all Coplanar Surfaces: [Shift + C]
Find in Blueprint: [Ctrl + K]
Show Navigation Mesh: [P ]
Duplicate and Transform: [Alt + Transform]
Camera/transformation shortcuts
Here are even more shortcuts when you’re working with camera and world/local transformation components:
Perspective View: [Alt + G]
Front View: [Alt + H]
Top View: [Alt + J]
Side View: [Alt + K]
Focus: [F]
View: [G]
Scale: [R ]
Translate: [W]
Rotate: [E]
Toggle Move/Rotate/Scale: [Spacebar]
F-key shortcuts
F1 – Open File
F2 – Rename
F4 – Actor Details
F8 – Possess
F9 – Shot Break
F11 – Full Screen
How to Add or Change Shortcuts in Unreal Engine
Want to create a custom shortcut layout that works better for your flow? Thankfully, Unreal Engine allows you to customize your keyboard shortcuts to your hearts content. This allows you to do things like recreate your shortcut workflow from another program, or simply create easier shortcuts for the actions you use most often in Unreal’s navigation.
Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Open “Editor Preferences.”
Step 2: Under “General,” select “Keyboard Shortcuts.”
You will now get a menu with all the different command shortcuts organized into drop-down menus.
You can click through these menus to find the command you’re looking for, or use the search function. Since we’re all about efficiency, we’re going to use the search function to find our commands.
Step 3: Use the “Search” feature to filter for specific actions or commands.
Step 4: Once you’ve located the command you want to change, click the text field to the right that says “Type a new binding.”
Step 5: Press the key or combination of keys you want to use to execute this action or command.
Step 6: To lock in your new shortcut, click anywhere outside the text box.
Now, one thing to keep in mind when you’re customizing keyboard shortcuts is that once you re-assign a key to a new function, its previous function will also need to be reassigned. It’s a good idea to keep a notebook close by to track what changes you’re making as you’re making them for a smoother process.
Customizing your hotkeys and shortcuts can make a huge difference in the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of your editing sessions. We always say that the best workflows are the ones that work for you, and that could not be more true than when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, remote collaboration, and more.
Final thoughts
If you’re looking for a better way to bring your creative team closer together and collaborate more efficiently from a distance, check out Evercast.
Evercast allows you to stream your editing sessions in full-HD while video chatting and exchanging notes with your team, all under one platform. This way, no one misses a single detail and you can eliminate issues with incompatible or incorrect assets because someone “missed an email.”
If you’ve been trying to collaborate with design colleague by streaming Unreal Engine over Zoom and running into lag issues, Evercast may be for you.
We believe that working remotely shouldn’t mean working alone, because collaboration is the magic behind turning a good project into a great one.
