Learn to craft custom Heads-Up Displays (HUDs) in Unreal Engine 5.3 with Synty Studios. This guide covers configuring UI scale, integrating pre-made widgets, and building personalized health and XP bars using their Fantasy Warrior HUD pack, perfect for any fantasy game.
Game developers constantly seek ways to immerse players, and a well-designed Heads-Up Display (HUD) is crucial for conveying vital information without breaking immersion. In a recent tutorial, Synty Studios, renowned for their stylized 3D art and game assets, walks us through creating custom HUDs in Unreal Engine 5.3.
This insightful guide leverages their popular Interface Fantasy Warrior HUD pack, demonstrating how to integrate both pre-made and custom elements for player health and experience bars. Let’s dive into the key steps for bringing your game’s interface to life.
Optimizing UI Scale for 4K Assets
Before diving into widget creation, the tutorial emphasizes a critical initial step: configuring Unreal Engine for 4K UI scaling. Synty’s interface assets are meticulously designed for 4K compatibility, so proper scaling is essential for a crisp, high-resolution look. To achieve this, navigate to Edit > Project Settings > User Interface and set the DPI Scale Rule to Scale to Fit. Expand this rule and ensure it’s accurately set to 3840×2160 to guarantee proper scaling of your assets across different screen resolutions.
Integrating Pre-Made HUD Widgets
Once your project settings are optimized, the video demonstrates how straightforward it is to add a pre-made HUD widget. This is perfect for quickly getting a functional interface up and running. In your character blueprint (e.g., BP_FirstPersonCharacter), use Event Begin Play to call Create Widget and then Add to Viewport. The key is to select the desired pre-made HUD class from the Synty Fantasy Warrior HUD folder. The pack includes four examples already set up, as well as a base you can use for further customization.
Crafting Your Own Custom HUD
For those seeking more control and a unique look, the tutorial also covers creating a custom HUD from a base widget. Instead of starting from scratch, you can duplicate the screen_fantasy_HUD_base from the pre-made HUDs folder. This base already includes some animations, giving you a valuable head start. Once duplicated and renamed (e.g., screen_my_HUD), you can open it up and drag new widgets from the palette, such as the stats_03 element, to add components like player health and experience bars. Remember to adjust the anchor and position for optimal screen placement and visual appeal.
Synty Studios: A Developer’s Ally
Synty Studios is well-known in the game development community for their distinctive low-poly, stylized art assets, which have been used in countless indie and even some larger productions. Their commitment to providing high-quality, game-ready assets extends to their UI packs, which are designed to seamlessly integrate with their popular POLYGON asset library, ensuring a cohesive art style across your entire game world.
The Fantasy Warrior HUD pack itself is incredibly comprehensive, boasting 178 prefabs (with animations), 279 blueprints, and over 1,100 sprites and icons. It offers extensive customization with visual variants and includes input icons for a wide range of controller types, including PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and Steam Deck. Notably, Unreal Engine support for this pack was added in August 2025, ensuring compatibility for future projects.
For developers looking to expand their asset collection, Synty Studios also offers SyntyPass, a subscription service that unlocks access to their entire library of over 130 art, animation, and UI packs. This can be a game-changer for studios and independent creators alike, providing a vast toolkit for various game genres and development needs.
