#1 UE5: Base Concepts — Projects

This series of articles is addressed to people new to Unreal Engine in general, not just UE5. It is definitely a plus to have programming knowledge, however it is not required to follow any articles in this series.

An Unreal Engine Project holds all the contents of your game. It contains a number of folders on your disk, such as Blueprints and Materials. You can name and organize folders inside a Project however you wish.

— Unreal Engine Documentation

If we are to start with the basics, this is as basic as it gets. A project is what constitute your Unreal Engine, well uh… project. It’s basically a folder containing all the different components that your game is going to use including graphic assets (3D meshes, 2D textures, materials, etc…), code files, sounds, etc…

The folder always contains the following:

Config

The config folder contains three files by default, each defining default setup of your project and editor for this project.

There will be a a separate article about setting up these configs. For now, we won’t loose time and focus on these.

Intermediate

The intermediate folder is a folder used by the engine to store temporary files (or intermediate files more precisely) during processes like compilation. Unless you are involved into changing the engine behavior programmatically, or planning to use C++ for your game, this folder won’t concern you. And even if you were to use C++, still consider the Intermediate folder as an Unreal Engine temporary files storage folder. Using Clean or Rebuild in Visual Studio would recreate files in the intermediate folder.

Saved

Autosaves: Unreal Engine autosaves on a defined period of time (every 10 minutes by default).

Collections: Collections are a great way to organize your content navigation. They will be stored in this folder.

Config: Will contain other configuration files for systems like Niagara, but also your crash reports.

Logs: Logs are an essential part of debugging your Unreal Engine project. This folder is where they will be located.

Other files will be added during your development, such as your screenshots.

DerivedDataCache

The DerivedDataCache folder will contain data that the engine will use to speed up the booting time of your Unreal Engine Project, as well as files that will allow certain assets to be used before all the dependencies (such as their 3D textures) have been loaded. For example, if you were to drop a table on your scene, you could manipulate it on your scene before its 3D shaders have compiled.

Content

This is basically the most important folder. This folder contains any asset that you will be using during your game development. Whether it is marketplace downloaded assets, or simply your own asset imports, this is where you will find all assets including 3D Materials, 2D Textures, Blueprints, Code, etc…