Getting Started

Getting Started

From zip to a first list of problems. Takes a few minutes.

Naming rules follow Allar's UE5 Style Guide, which most Unreal projects already lean on.

Installation

There are two kinds of package and they install differently.

A precompiled package, the demo zip or the Fab install, already has binaries in it. Put the AssetStandardsValidator folder into your engine, at UE_5.x/Engine/Plugins/Marketplace/, and there is nothing to build.

A source package goes into the project instead:

YourProject/
  Plugins/
    AssetStandardsValidator/   ← here
      AssetStandardsValidator.uplugin

Then right-click the .uproject, pick Generate Visual Studio project files, and build the Development Editor configuration. From a terminal that is Build.bat YourProjectEditor Win64 Development. If you skip this, the editor offers to compile the plugin the first time you open the project.

Either way you finish in Edit → Plugins. Find Asset Standards Validator under the Editor category, tick it, and restart when the editor asks.

What you see right away

Assets that failed a check get a small badge on their icon in the Content Browser, and so does every folder that holds one. The colour is the worst thing found on that asset:

Badge	Means
Bright red	P0, something that breaks the pipeline
Dark red	P1, a major violation
Yellow	P2, a style violation
Blue	P3, informational
No badge	nothing found, or this asset has not been scanned yet

Badges come from scan results, so they show up after the first scan and update after every one. Hover an asset to see the list of what it failed.

First scan

Open the Tools menu. Under the Asset Standards Validator heading there is Run Full Audit. Click it and the scan starts; the panel opens by itself when it is done. The same thing sits on the Level Editor toolbar, as the Standards Validator button.

To open the panel without scanning, use Tools → Open Standards Validator. The panel has its own scan button, Validate All, which reads Scanning... while it works.

By default a scan covers everything under /Game. Each row gives you the asset path, the rule ID, what went wrong, and the fix it proposes.

Severity levels

Every result carries a priority. Each rule has its own, and you can change it in the config.

Level	Meaning	Rules that ship at this level
P0	Breaks the pipeline	missing_prefix, blueprint_compile_error, wrong_folder, texture_exceeds_max_size
P1	Major violation	missing_suffix, texture_wrong_srgb, folder_not_pascal_case, stale_redirector
P2	Style violation	texture_wrong_compression, bp_editable_missing_tooltip, mesh_no_lods, wrong_case
P3	Worth knowing, breaks nothing	bp_editable_missing_range, bp_vars_uncategorized

Start at P0 and P1. Those are the ones that cost someone a day later. The Severity filter in the panel narrows the list down to them.

Fix issues

Rows that can fix themselves have a Fix button, showing the proposed value where there is one. Rows that cannot are greyed out. The Auto-fix Guide lists which rules belong to which group.

Warning: Renames and folder moves cannot be undone with Ctrl+Z. The engine leaves a redirector at the old path so references keep working, but the rename itself does not roll back. Check the files out in Perforce, or commit in Git, before you run a batch fix. Property fixes are different: texture settings and Blueprint variable renames undo normally, and Ctrl+Z rolls back the whole batch in one go.

Automatic scanning

Note: The plugin writes a config on first run and four of its triggers are already on, so saving, creating or renaming an asset validates it straight away. Nothing else runs by itself: a full scan happens only when you ask for one.

What the auto-created config sets up:

Trigger	When it fires	In the default config
OnSave	An asset is saved	on
OnAssetCreated	A new asset is created	on
OnAssetRenamed	An asset is renamed	on
Manual	You ask for it, from the panel or the Tools menu	on
OnStartup	The editor opens	off, it runs a full scan
OnPIE	Play In Editor starts	off, it runs a full scan
PreBeginPIE	Just before Play starts, while the editor world is still whole. For level and world checks.	not added, you add it yourself

Triggers live in the Triggers array of your ASVCheckerConfig asset. Configuration has the setup steps.

Content Browser integration

Right-click an asset. Everything below sits under the Asset Standards Validator heading in the menu.

Action	What it does
Validate Now	Runs every active checker on the selected asset or assets, right now
Fix Issues	Opens a submenu of the issue types found, so you can fix one type across the whole selection
Open in Standards Validator	Opens the panel filtered down to this asset
Open Config	Opens the checker config responsible for the errors on this asset
Add to Ignore List	Skips these assets in every future run. The entry reads Remove from Ignore List once they are on it.

Right-click a folder and the same heading gives you:

Action	What it does
Validate Folder	Runs every active checker on everything in the folder, recursively
Fix Issues	The same submenu, applied to the whole folder
Ignore This Folder	Skips everything inside it. Reads Stop Ignoring This Folder afterwards.

The ignore lists are stored in Project Settings → Plugins → Asset Standards Validator, as IgnoreAssets and IgnoreFolders.

Custom configuration

You already have a config. The plugin creates DA_ASV_AllarStyleGuide in /Game/Data the first time it runs, with a conservative set of rules on. Open it to switch checks on or off.

For a second config, right-click in the Content Browser and look under Asset Standards Validator → Checker Configs:

Template	What you get
Empty Config	Nothing in it. Add the validators and triggers you want.
Starter Template	Every validator and trigger present, all disabled. Turn on what you need.
Allar Style Guide	The same preset the plugin creates for you on first run.

Configs are found automatically, there is no registration step. Configuration has the full reference.

CI integration

The plugin ships a commandlet for build pipelines. See Commandlet arguments.