The gamedev world knows building UI in game engines is no easy feat. Designers and developers need to connect, negotiate, and compromise. Existing UI tools in game engines are rudimentary and require designers to be proficient in programs built for developers. And then you add animation to the mix? Forget about it.
What’s Rive doing about it?
Enter Rive, the design software that lets you create functional graphics that are ready to run. Rive’s technological advantages are perfect for game developers, who are uniquely sensitive to performance and have high standards around visual flair and animation. But the core tooling has been proven at scale via our other industry clients like Duolingo, Shopify, and Figma.
That’s why we prioritized building and releasing an Unreal Engine plugin, in addition to plugins for game engines Unity and Defold. Unreal Engine powers companies across multiple industries, like games (Fortnite), television (The Mandalorian), automotive (BMW), live events (Fox Sports), and more.
Now designers can build interactive UI in Rive, add them to their Unreal Engine game, and control the game logic using the Rive State Machine with Unreal Engine blueprints. It’s a design-led experience in the Rive Editor, while our State Machine lets them build full interactivity. UI is no longer a debate between developers and designers, or an afterthought.
The Unreal Engine plugin gives designers the peace of mind that what they build in the Rive Editor will look and behave exactly the same in Unreal Engine. No more detailed specs on how you want shapes to behave and the properties needed. Now workflow is streamlined from design to production, saving developers valuable time with each design iteration. We call this ✨Runtime Design.✨
With Rive, a game designer doesn’t need to be a game engine expert to create UI images. For example, now if you create a design in Rive and want to sell it to a support studio, it doesn’t matter which game engine the studio uses. It will look and function the same wherever Rive runs — and with excellent performance thanks to the custom-built Rive Renderer, which draws an unprecedented amount of vectors with perfect analytic antialiasing.
Why game designers and developers love Rive:
Dynamic text easily localized to any language
Vector graphics from design to runtime
State Machines that empower designers to drive interactivity
Powerful animation tools that feel familiar to motion graphics designers, like the graph editor, joysticks, and constraints
Multiplayer collaboration
Runs anywhere, including other game engines, websites, and apps
We're working hard to bring more groundbreaking features to the gamedev community, including a direct way to update Rive files in game engines, data binding, and advanced layout features. Rive’s format and runtimes are also open-source — and always will be — with plans to make the Rive Renderer open-source very, very soon.
In addition to the Unreal Engine, Unity, and Defold plugins, we support a variety of game integrations through custom integration using our C++ runtime, Bevy runtime, and more to come in the future.
How does it work?
It’s as simple as downloading a Rive design and dragging/dropping it into Unreal Engine. Seriously.
Rive's runtime and format are completely free, while the Editor requires a paid plan. Eventually we'll add the plugin to the Unreal Engine Marketplace for free. For now, find it and additional documentation on the plugin on Github.
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