Making Crosshairs That Actually React to Gameplay in Unreal Engine
Learn how to build a dynamic crosshair in Unreal Engine 5 using UI Materials — no textures needed, fully procedural and reactive to your character's movement speed.
In this Unreal Engine 5 tutorial, you'll create a crosshair that expands when your character moves and shrinks when standing still — all driven by a UI Material with a Scalar Parameter and Blueprint logic. Perfect for shooters, action games, or any project that needs a polished, professional HUD.
What you'll learn:
How to set up a UI Material (Material Domain + Blend Mode)
Building crosshair shapes procedurally with MX_TileCircles
Using Scalar Parameters + Lerp nodes to control spread range
Creating a Material Instance for runtime modifications
Wiring it all up with Blueprint: velocity → normalized spread → UpdateSpread function
Chapters:
0:00 — Preview & what we're building
3:42 — Setting up the UI Material
5:04 — Building the crosshair shape with MX_TileCircles
8:30 — Adding the Spread parameter with Lerp
9:20 — Creating the Material Instance
10:07 — UpdateSpread function in the HUD Widget
11:45 — Velocity-based spread logic in the Character Blueprint
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