tutorial · 2026-03-06
How to Document Unreal Engine Blueprints Without Leaving the Editor
Write rich, per-Blueprint notes that auto-attach to the active asset, auto-save as you type, and live in your project under source control.
Why Blueprint documentation rots in external tools
Every Blueprint-heavy project accumulates knowledge that lives nowhere useful. Why this state machine has three exit conditions, why that component caches a reference at Begin Play, which of the seven similarly named Blueprints is the real entry point. The usual answer is to write it down somewhere else: a Notion page, a Confluence space, an Obsidian vault, a wiki. And the usual outcome is that the documentation rots. The Blueprint changes, the external page does not, and six months later nobody trusts the docs enough to read them.
The root problem is distance. When your notes live in a different application behind a different login, keeping them in sync means alt-tabbing out of the editor, finding the right page, and editing it by hand every time you touch a graph. That friction is exactly where documentation dies. If you have been searching for how to document Unreal Engine Blueprints in a way that actually stays current, the fix is to close the distance and keep the notes inside the editor, attached to the asset they describe.
Markdown 4 Blueprints does exactly that. It is an editor-only documentation tool that adds a panel where you write rich notes attached to a specific Blueprint, auto-detected from whatever asset is active. The notes are saved as .md files inside your project, so they travel with the asset through source control and stay next to the thing they document. One point to set straight up front, because the marketplace blurb can read ambiguously: this is an authoring tool for the editor, not a runtime widget. It does not render Markdown into your in-game UMG. It is for documenting your Blueprints while you build them.
Installing and opening the documentation panel
Installation follows the standard plugin process. Copy the BlueprintMarkdown folder into your project's Plugins directory, then open the project. Because this is an editor module that loads after engine init, you enable it under Edit > Plugins, where it appears as 'Blueprint Markdown Documentation'. Tick it and restart the editor so Unreal loads the module.
It is worth being clear about scope. Markdown 4 Blueprints is a single editor module, 'BlueprintMarkdown', and the packaged plugin targets Windows 64-bit on Unreal Engine 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7. It depends on the engine's built-in WebBrowserWidget plugin to render the WYSIWYG editing surface, so make sure that plugin is available (it ships with the engine). Everything runs fully offline, with no internet calls and no external libraries to fetch.
Once the editor is back up, open the panel from the Window menu, listed as 'Blueprint Documentation'. The plugin also adds entry points to the Level Editor toolbar and the Blueprint Editor toolbar, so you can summon the panel from wherever you happen to be working. Dock it next to your graph the way you would the Details panel and it becomes a permanent fixture of your editing layout.
Creating a note for the active Blueprint
The point of the tool is that documentation tracks the asset, not the other way round. With a Blueprint open and focused, the panel knows which asset you mean, so writing docs for it is a single action rather than a filing exercise.
1. Open the Blueprint you want to document so it is the active asset.
2. In the Blueprint Documentation panel, click 'New Note'. The note is created for the active Blueprint, with no need to name a file or choose a folder yourself.
3. Start writing in the WYSIWYG editor. This is rich-text editing with live preview, not raw Markdown: headings, bold, italic, code blocks, tables, images and links all render as you go, so you never have to remember syntax. Use Ctrl+B for bold, Ctrl+I for italic and Ctrl+U for underline.
4. To add a comparison or a parameter list, use the visual table editor in the toolbar rather than typing Markdown pipes. The toolbar controls build and edit the table for you.
5. To illustrate a graph or a panel layout, insert an image through the native file picker and resize it inline. The image is stored alongside the note.
If you want documentation that is not tied to any single asset, such as a project overview or a coding-standards page, create a note with no Blueprint focused and it becomes a standalone note. Those are kept in their own area so they do not get muddled with per-asset docs.
Auto-save and auto-detection: the two features that keep docs alive
Two behaviours do most of the work of keeping documentation honest, and both are automatic. The first is auto-save. There is no save button to forget and no dialog to dismiss. The note is written to disk 500 milliseconds after you stop typing, so the moment you pause, your changes are persisted. In practice this means the notes are always current with what you last wrote, which is precisely the property that external wikis lack.
The second is auto-detection. When you switch to a different Blueprint, the panel loads the documentation matching that asset, and the content follows you as you move between Blueprints. You do not navigate to the right page; opening the asset is navigating to its docs. That tight coupling is what removes the friction that normally kills in-project documentation, because reading and updating a Blueprint's notes is no more work than having the panel open.
There are a few quality-of-life touches around these two. You can optionally have the associated Blueprint open automatically when you select a note, so the workflow runs in either direction: pick the asset and its docs appear, or pick the docs and the asset appears. The sidebar has an expand-all-folders toggle for a large tree, and deleting a note goes through a confirmation dialog so you do not lose work by mis-clicking.
Where the files land in your project
Because the notes are real files, it helps to know exactly where they live so you can commit them and reason about them in source control. Per-asset notes mirror your content hierarchy: a note for a given Blueprint is written to Documentation/Blueprints/{AssetPath}.md, where {AssetPath} follows the asset's location in the project. Standalone notes, the ones not tied to an asset, are written under Documentation/Blueprints/Standalone/.
Mirroring the content hierarchy is a deliberate convenience. The documentation folder ends up shaped like your Content folder, so finding the note for a deeply nested Blueprint is intuitive, and a diff in a pull request sits right next to the change it describes. Since these are plain .md files committed with the project, the documentation versions exactly in step with the Blueprints, which is the entire point.
If the default location does not suit your project layout, the storage path is configurable. The plugin exposes a Documentation Storage Path setting through Project Settings (look for the Blueprint Markdown section), backed by a developer-settings class stored in your per-project editor settings. Set it once and every note follows the new path.
When you need the documentation outside the editor, for a handoff, a release archive, or to publish, use the one-click Export Notes action. It dumps everything to an external '{ProjectName} Documentation' folder and preserves the same file structure, so the exported bundle reads the same way the in-editor tree does.
Fitting it into a documentation workflow
Markdown 4 Blueprints solves the in-editor authoring half of documentation, and it pairs naturally with other parts of a project's docs story. If you want to read finished PDF documents back inside Unreal, for instance on an in-world kiosk, Simple PDF Viewer renders PDF pages to textures in the level. If your docs need to surface live data rather than prose, Fast Chart Widgets draws charts in UMG at runtime, and EasyHTTP can pull that data from a backend over a REST API from Blueprint. These are separate tools for separate jobs, but they sit in the same Blueprint-first toolkit.
The practical takeaway is small and immediate. Install Markdown 4 Blueprints, enable 'Blueprint Markdown Documentation' under Edit > Plugins, restart, and open the panel from Window > Blueprint Documentation. Open the Blueprint you understand least, click New Note, and write the three things you wish someone had told you about it. Because the note auto-saves and auto-attaches, that knowledge is now committed next to the asset, and it will be there the next time you, or anyone on the team, opens that Blueprint.
Per-asset notes vs standalone notes
| Note type | How it is created | Where it is stored |
|---|---|---|
| Per-asset note | Click New Note with a Blueprint active; it auto-attaches to that asset | Documentation/Blueprints/{AssetPath}.md, mirroring the content hierarchy |
| Standalone note | Click New Note with no Blueprint focused | Documentation/Blueprints/Standalone/ |
| Exported bundle | Use the one-click Export Notes action | External '{ProjectName} Documentation' folder, same structure preserved |
Markdown 4 Blueprints distinguishes documentation attached to a specific Blueprint from project-level notes that belong to nothing in particular.
FAQ
How do I document Unreal Engine Blueprints without leaving the editor?
Install and enable Markdown 4 Blueprints ('Blueprint Markdown Documentation' under Edit > Plugins), restart, then open the panel from Window > Blueprint Documentation. With a Blueprint open, click New Note and write in the WYSIWYG editor. The note auto-attaches to the active Blueprint and auto-saves 500ms after you stop typing, so the documentation lives inside the editor next to the asset it describes.
Where are the documentation files saved?
Per-asset notes are written to Documentation/Blueprints/{AssetPath}.md, mirroring your project's content hierarchy, and standalone notes go under Documentation/Blueprints/Standalone/. They are plain .md files committed with the project, so they version alongside your Blueprints. You can change the location via the Documentation Storage Path in Project Settings.
Do I have to write raw Markdown syntax?
No. The editor is WYSIWYG with live preview, so headings, bold, italic, code blocks, tables, images and links render as you type. There is a visual table editor in the toolbar instead of typing Markdown pipes, a native file picker for images with inline resize, and Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U for bold, italic and underline.
Can Markdown 4 Blueprints display Markdown in my game's UI at runtime?
No. It is an editor-only documentation authoring tool, not a runtime UMG widget. It does not render Markdown into in-game UI; it is for writing and storing notes about your Blueprints while you build them in the editor.
Which platforms and engine versions does it support?
The packaged plugin targets Windows 64-bit on Unreal Engine 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7. It is a single editor module that depends on the engine's built-in WebBrowserWidget plugin for its WYSIWYG surface, and it runs fully offline with no external libraries.
Markdown 4 Blueprints
Drive your UI text from simple Markdown instead of brittle Rich Text markup. Headings, lists, code blocks, links and inline styling render straight into UMG — perfect for quest logs, patch notes and in-game docs.
