Follow the First Asset tutorial to guide you through the process of building procedures in Unreal. Covers placing a mesh asset and is followed by a second one about building some coloured geometry.

The best way start seeing how Apparance works and learning how to use it is by exploring the Apparance Examples project. This takes you gradually step-by-step through various, increasingly complex examples.

Commercial Version Installation

The Commercial version of the plugin is handled by the Epic Launcher. See the Epic Marketplace online for installation instructions.

Demo Version Installation

The Demo version is downloaded from the product page on Itch.io, either as a single installer application file, or as separate zip files for each engine version.

Apparance Demo Installer (Recommended)

Download and run the Apparance Demo Installer to manage installation of all versions of the plugin to any Unreal installations or projects you have on your computer. This is by far the simplest way to get the plugin installed.

You will need to accept the warnings in order to run it as Windows doesn't like you running executable files downloaded from the internet.

The Apparance Installer application is used for managing plugin use

Manual Download and Install

If you don't want to use the installer, are having trouble with it, or just want to download one version; use the following process to manually install the plugin.

1. Which version of Unreal are using? e.g. 4.26
2. Download the matching plugin from Itch.io

Install

1. Find the Unreal plugins folder, e.g. C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.26\Engine\Plugins
2. Make Procedural\ApparanceUnreal folders under it.
3. Unzip the files into there.

You should end up with a path to the main plugin definition file like this:

C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_4.26\Engine\Plugins\Procedural\ApparanceUnreal\ApparanceUnreal.uplugin

If you are upgrading to a new version of the plugin, make sure you delete the old files in Procedural\ApparanceUnreal first

Next Steps

To get your projects prepared for procedural generation, follow the Unreal Plugin tutorial.

Alternatively perhaps download the Example Project below and explore some interactive procedural exhibits.

Example Project

A project full of example procedural objects is available for download from Github. Select according to the Unreal version you are using.

The Apparance Unreal Examples Project

Demonstrates

• Placing assets
• Composite procedures
• Parameterisation
• Iteration
• Variation
• Seeding
• Palletisation
• Geometry generation

Direct download links

• Unreal 4.25: ApparanceUnrealExamples-versions-UE4.25.zip
• Unreal 4.26: ApparanceUnrealExamples-versions-UE4.26.zip
• Unreal 4.27: ApparanceUnrealExamples-versions-UE4.27.zip
• Unreal 5.0: ApparanceUnrealExamples-versions-UE5.0.zip
• Unreal 5.1: ApparanceUnrealExamples-versions-UE5.1.zip

(each approx 20MB)

Instructions

1. Download, unzip somewhere, and open the UnrealExamples.uproject file
2. Navigate to the Examples\Basic\ folder and open the PlacementExamples map.
3. Have a look round the scene in the editor (you can select procedural objects and fiddle with their parameters)
4. Play-in-Editor to explore all the demonstrations (some are interactive)