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Unreal Quick Start

Stream your Blender scene live into the Unreal editor, then bake it to a reusable Blueprint over real assets. This guide gets you from install to a synced scene in a few minutes.

Requirements: Blender 4.2+, Unreal Engine 5.4 to 5.8 (developed against 5.6), a C++ project (the editor compiles the plugin on open), both on the same machine (loopback TCP), Win64.

1. Install the Blender add-on

  1. In Blender, open Edit, Preferences, Add-ons.
  2. Use the menu and choose Install from Disk, then pick a zip of the blender/loom/ folder.
  3. Enable Loom in the list.
  4. The panel appears in the 3D Viewport, N sidebar, Loom tab.

2. Install the Unreal plugin

  1. Copy (or junction) unreal/Loom/ into your project’s Plugins/ folder.
  2. Open the project. If prompted to rebuild the Loom module, accept. The editor compiles it.
  3. In Edit, Plugins, confirm Loom Live Link is enabled (search “Loom”), and restart if asked.
  4. Open the panel from Tools, Loom. The dockable tab is titled Loom.

3. Connect

  1. In Unreal, open Tools, Loom and press Start Listener. The status reads Listening on 127.0.0.1:8787.
  2. In Blender’s Loom sidebar panel, press Connect. Both sides default to 127.0.0.1:8787, so on one machine it just connects.
  3. The Loom tab shows Connected, and your synced objects appear in the level, re-based into Unreal space (Z-up, centimetres).

Now edit in Blender. Meshes, rigs, lights and cameras stream into Unreal live as UDynamicMeshComponents. Moving an object sends a tiny transform packet, and sculpting or animating streams positions only (CPU linear-blend skinning for rigs).

4. Sync materials

Materials are kept off the realtime path. Press Sync Materials in the Blender panel to push Principled materials and node-graph shaders. Loom builds a C++-authored LoomLit UMaterial and ports supported node graphs to HLSL in a per-material Custom node, compiled in-editor. Unsupported graphs fall back to a faithful Principled material.

5. Bake to a Blueprint

When you are happy with the preview, use the Bake to Assets section of the Loom tab. Loom saves the meshes, materials and textures as real UStaticMesh, USkeletalMesh, UMaterial and UTexture2D assets, plus a reusable BP_LoomBake Blueprint whose component hierarchy mirrors the scene. Toggle skeletal meshes, prefab Blueprint, lightmap UVs and static GI, and colliders before baking.

Tips and toggles

  • Selective sync. Stream only a chosen collection or just the selection, and freeze a finished object so it stops updating while you iterate.
  • Hand-edit protection. Blender is the source of truth. A hand-edit in Unreal is protected (updates pause) rather than overwritten, until you release it.
  • Play and PIE. Live Blender edits stream into a running Play-in-Editor session.
  • Colliders and LOD. Name proxies with the UE collision prefixes (UCX_, UBX_, USP_, UCP_) plus Loom’s UMC_, and siblings <base>_LOD0..n for LODs.

Troubleshooting

  • No Loom tab. Confirm Loom Live Link is enabled in Edit, Plugins, then look under Tools, Loom.
  • Plugin will not build. Loom is a C++ editor plugin. Open it from a C++ project (or convert a Blueprint-only project once so the editor can compile modules). Win64 only.
  • Blender says “Waiting for Unreal”. Press Start Listener in the Loom tab first.
  • Materials look flat or default. Press Sync Materials. Materials do not ride the live geometry stream.

The Unreal consumer is a peer of the Unity one on the same wire. See Architecture for the shared design.