Hand Menu

Hand menus allow users to quickly bring up hand-attached UI for frequently used functions. To prevent false activation while interacting with other objects, hand menu provides options such as 'Require Flat Hand'. It is recommended to use these options to prevent unwanted activation.

There are some examples of various hand menus in \UXToolsGame\Plugins\UXToolsExamples\Content\HandMenu\Blueprints.

Creating a hand menu

In this example we are going to create a basic three button hand menu, similar to BP_SmallHandMenu in the hand menu example scene.

  1. The UxtUIElementComponent and the UxtPalmUpConstraintComponent handle the majority of the work for a simple hand menu.

    • Create a new blueprint actor, in this example we will call it BP_ExampleHandMenu.
    • Add a UxtUIElementComponent and set it as the root component for the actor.
    • Add a UxtPalmUpConstraintComponent and set Require Flat Hand and Require Gaze to true to prevent false activations.

    CreateActor

  2. Now that we have our foundation, we will add some buttons to the menu.

    • Add three ChildActorComponents to the blueprint, and set their child actor class to UxtPressableButtonActor.
    • Move one button above and another below the center button. This will be a Z value of 3.2 and -3.2.
    • Configure the buttons using the button options in the child actor template.

    ButtonSetup

  3. Next we want to give the buttons a seamless backplate.

    • Add a UxtBackPlateComponent and set its material to MI_HoloLens2BackPlate.
    • Set the back plate's scale to 9.6 on the Z axis to make it three buttons tall.
    • Un-check Is Plated on the button actors to remove their default backplate.

    SeamlessBackplate

  4. Finally we want to show and hide the menu using the palm up constraint.

    • In the event graph, add the On Constraint Activated and On Constraint Deactivated events from the UxtPalmUpConstraintComponent
    • In On Constraint Activated, call Set UI Visibility on the UxtUIElementComponent with a value of Show.
    • In On Constraint Deactivated, call Set UI Visibility on the UxtUIElementComponent with a value of Hide.
    • You can configure how far the menu will sit from the hand with the Goal Margin property on the UxtPalmUpConstraintComponent, for this example it is set to 3.6.
    • Set the UI Visibility property on the UxtUIElementComponent to Hide to hide the menu by default.

    EventGraph

  5. To test out the menu in editor, press the Home key while moving a hand to put it in the flat palm pose and move the hand towards the center of the screen to trigger the gaze requirement.

    TestInEditor

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