Workflow Enhancements

Draw Curve

If you need a simple curve to use for masking or anything else in your UE5 level, you can draw one interactively with Dash. You can start the Draw Curve mode from the Create - Curve Tools menu or by searching for Draw Curve. Once in draw mode, you can start drawing by holding the left mouse button, and you will also see that some settings have appeared in the Dash bar. Here you can control the Offset from the ground, the Distance between the points, the Smoothness of the curve, and also switch between modes, Freeform and End Points. While in the End Points mode, you will also see a Gravity setting that controls how far down the points between the end-points hang.

There also exist some hotkeys you can use to adjust your already created curves. Hover over one of your created curves and then hold SHIFT + middle mouse button to control the smoothness, hold CTRL + middle mouse button to control the number of points, and hold only the middle mouse button to control the Offset from the ground. This also goes for curves you created in a previous draw session. Simply select an existing curve, open Draw Curve mode, and use the hotkeys to adjust existing curves.

Draw Spline

If you want actual splines with curvature and tangents between each point, you can instead use the Dash Draw Spline tool. This tool lets you interactively draw and edit splines with tangents. You can start the Draw Spline mode from the Create - Curve Tools menu or by searching for Draw Spline.

Once in Draw Mode, you use the left mouse button to place points and then move the mouse to adjust the tangent of the points. To move an existing point, simply select it with the left mouse button and move it. To edit an existing tangent on a point, use the middle mouse button. In order to make sure the tangents don't point downwards or upwards, you can hold SHIFT to project the tangents to the surface you are drawing on. To edit an existing spline from another draw session, simply select the spline before opening the Draw Spline tool.

Spline Primitives

If you need splines in specific shapes, you can use the Spline Primitives shipped in Dash. These are found in the Create - Curve Primitive menu, and the options available are Circle, Square, rounded square, or Line.

Borders to Curves

If you want to create a curve based on the borders of a flat mesh in Unreal Engine, the action Borders to Curves is exactly what you need. Simply select your flat mesh and run the action from search or from the Create - Curve tools menu. If you want to adjust the output curve, you can select it and open the Draw Curve tool mentioned above to customize the number of points, the offset, and its smoothness.

Create Alpha Cards / Alpha Cut

One really powerful feature of Dash is the ability to convert atlases/opacity maps into actual meshes in UE5. To do this, run the Create Alpha Cards action from search or from the Create - Mesh tools menu and select your atlas/opacity map. In a few seconds, you will see the meshes have been generated in your level. If you want some control of this process, you can instead open the Alpha Cut tool from the search bar.

Select/Place Tools

To make your UE5 experience a little easier, we have added a few utility tools in Dash as well. When it comes to asset placement, in the Place menu, you can find Select Nearby/Above, which you can use to easily select the assets that are nearby or above your initial selection. Then we have Project Below, which you can use to project the selected assets downwards onto the underlying surface. And lastly, there is Random Swap, which swaps the location of all the selected assets randomly.

Transform Tools

In Dash, we also offer a few transform tools that you can use to adjust your selected assets. The options available in the Place - Transform tools menu are Average, Min or Max Scale, and Random Angles.

Pivot Tools

And the final category of utility tools is the Pivot Tools available in Dash. Simply select one or several assets and then choose between Center, Bottom, or Top Pivot from the Create - Pivot tools menu. With these 3 tools, it is super easy to adjust the pivots of your assets.

Camera Tool

We are also shipping a Camera Tool in Dash, which consists of a special Dash CineCamera. You can create this camera from the Create menu or from the search bar. Once opened, you will see that the Camera Tool opens in the Tools Panel, and in here you can control all the important camera settings easily and also cycle through a bunch of included grading presets. If you have closed the Camera Tool and need to reopen it, simply open the Tools Panel with the Edit button in the Dash bar, select your camera in the outlier, and then you can find the Camera Tool in the top right menu of the Tools Panel. Once you are piloting the DashCineCamera, you can also drag and drop an image right into the Dash bar to extract its grading to the camera.

Image Board

To make sure you don't have to be dependent on too many separate softwares, we have integrated an Image Board into Dash. This gives you the features of PureRef or Miro, straight inside of Unreal Engine. Here you can collect all your reference images to make it easier to create amazing UE5 art. Simply open it from the Content menu and start adding and adjusting your images with the tools in the left side menu. All the available shortcuts are shown in the top menu. One of the most popular features of this Image Board is the ability to extract the grading from one image directly to the camera selected in the viewport. (Only works if you are using a camera from Dash)

Mesh Convex Hull

Our Mesh Convex Hull tool has been improved extensively. Now it's incredibly easy to create a convex hull around your meshes or your instances to easily control the collision your players experience when they interact with your objects.

Open the tool from the Dash search bar, assign one or several static meshes, or a scatter/physics instance, and then use the Compute Convex Hull button to generate your convex hulls. If the results are too small, have too few pieces or need any other adjustments, simply adjust the settings in the tool and hit the Compute button to re-generate the hulls.