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automotive/ · 03

Unreal-Protopie Integration

A bridge that drives Unreal Engine 3D scenes from a ProtoPie UI running inside the Unreal viewport, so automotive HMI teams can validate 2D touch controls against a live 3D vehicle.

Fig. 1. ProtoPie web UI controls driving live camera switching and mesh scaling inside Unreal Engine.
Fig. 1. ProtoPie web UI controls driving live camera switching and mesh scaling inside Unreal Engine.

01 problem

Automotive clients needed a way to validate high-fidelity ProtoPie HMI interfaces inside Unreal Engine's real-time 3D environments. Without a native bridge, design teams could not evaluate how 2D touch controls affect 3D vehicle states (like camera perspectives and spatial asset scaling) in real time.

02 approach

Built a modular interactive 2D control panel in ProtoPie Studio featuring camera preset triggers and a vehicle scale slider.

Hosted the prototype via ProtoPie Connect to expose live WebSocket message events.

Embedded Unreal Engine's internal web browser widget to render the ProtoPie UI overlay directly inside the viewport.

Programmed Blueprint visual scripts in Unreal Engine to listen to incoming ProtoPie messages and map them to dynamic camera switching and 3D mesh scaling.

03 stack

prototype ProtoPie Studio · interactive UI
host ProtoPie Connect
3d engine Unreal Engine · Web Browser Widget
logic Unreal Blueprints · WebSocket listener

04 outcome

Real-time Blueprint event messaging between ProtoPie UI controls and Unreal Engine 3D viewport
Instant UI interaction feedback driving 3D camera transitions and asset transformations without recompiling C++ or Blueprints

The bridge proved that ProtoPie Connect can drive Unreal Engine 3D scenes in real time. It answered client demand for integrating ProtoPie with Unreal Engine, letting design teams test spatial HMI interactions without modifying native C++ code or manually rebuilding scenes.

05 artifacts

video youtu.be/lyOmYOKS0LU