CookieJar
An Unreal Engine 5 Physics-Assisted Container Dressing Plugin
Currently in progress. I will keep updating this page until it's fully completed!
Design Document
I planned CookieJar around an artist-first workflow, defining the tool's scope, architecture, functional requirements, and development milestones before and throughout implementation.
View Full Design Document (PDF)
Languages: C++
Stop hand-placing every apple.
CookieJar is a physics-assisted procedural dressing tool for Unreal Engine 5 that helps environment artists quickly fill containers with unique and natural-looking arrangements of props -- drop in your meshes, hit Generate, and let Chaos physics tumble everything into place. Generate, iterate, and bake variations directly in-level, turning a repetitive set-dressing task into a fast, artist-controlled workflow.
Technical Highlights:
Bounds-Aware Placement · Procedural Spawn Scattering · Seeded Randomization · Parameter-Driven Generation · Chaos Physics Integration · Velocity-Based Settle Detection · Smart Overflow / Exit Logic · Editable Bake Pipeline
Minutes
(manual dressing)
vs.
Seconds
(with CookieJar)
Generate unique, container-aware arrangements in seconds using physics.
See CookieJar in action HERE:
(I used it heavily in my Waterway project)
In Progress!
The Problem
-
Dressing containers with dozens of props by hand is repetitive and time-consuming, especially across scenes with many containers.
-
Duplicating and rotating one handmade arrangement to save time creates visible repeated patterns once several containers share a scene.
-
Manual placement is prone to clipping, unnatural clustering, and inconsistent results between artists working on the same environment.
The Solution
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Physics-assisted procedural placement generates natural-looking, settled arrangements in seconds instead of hours of manual nudging.
-
One-click regeneration lets artists quickly explore different densities, randomness, and compositions without starting over.
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Results preview directly in-level, in context with the surrounding scene, and bake into fully editable static props once approved.
Target Users
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Environment artists and set dressers filling containers -- baskets, crates, shelves -- across a level.
-
Level designers, 3D layout artists, and art directors reviewing and iterating on scene dressing.
-
Production pipelines needing fast, consistent container dressing across scenes with many repeated containers (markets, shops, warehouses).
CookieJar had been floating around in my head for a while before I even had a project to use it on. The moment I saw the concept art for my current project, I knew I'd be dressing a ton of containers -- baskets, crates, shelves -- and I could already picture the problem: duplicating the same basket of fruit across a dozen stalls would look repetitive, but hand-placing a unique arrangement for every single one wasn't realistic either. So before touching the actual dressing work, I built myself the tool I knew I'd need. CookieJar drops the props in, lets physics settle them into something believable, and bakes the result in seconds -- so every basket in the scene can actually look different.
Waterway Environment Buildout Progress (Unreal Engine 5)
... more to come
... coming soon