Quick and Dirty guide to getting Unreal MCP up and running
I'm using Ollama with gemma4:31b locally for AI along with the excellent ollmcp for the CLI. I won't cover how to install an AI client or models (there's lot of guides for that on the web).
Run Unreal 5.8 editor for your project.
"Edit -> Plugins", search for "MCP" and enable "Unreal MCP", "Yes" to enable this plugin, click "Restart Now".
"Edit -> Editor Preferences...", in the 'General' section, scroll down to 'Model Context Protocol' and select it. Check 'Auto Start Server' to automatically start the MCP server for future editor runs.
This will use http://127.0.0.1:8000/mcp for the MCP server URL.
To start the server now, without restarting the editor enter the following into the Command Console window at the bottom of the editor:
ModelContextProtocol.StartServer
You should see the following in the Output Log window...
Cmd: ModelContextProtocol.StartServer
LogHttpServerModule: Starting all listeners...
LogHttpListener: Created new HttpListener on 127.0.0.1:8000
LogHttpServerModule: All listeners started
Now we need to create the .json file(s) to allow AI clients to connect to the Unreal MCP server. This can be done with the following Console Command for vscode:
ModelContextProtocol.GenerateClientConfig VSCode
This will create a .vscode folder at the root of your project and it will create a mcp.json file that you will use inside VSCode.
The more general form of that console command is: "ModelContextProtocol.GenerateClientConfig <ClaudeCode|Cursor|VSCode|Gemini|Codex|All>" to pick the AI client you want to create a .json file for, or use "All" to create .json files for all of them.
Start Visual Studio Code, and in vscode, click "File -> Open Folder..." and browse the the folder where your project's .uproject file is located (this will be where the .vscode folder was created previously).
In VSCode, click Ctrl+Shift+P and then click "MCP: List Servers", and you should see 'unreal-mcp' listed. If it says 'stopped' click on it to start it.
Click 'Start Server' and you should see it discover the tools available (it should say "Discovered 3 tools") and in the Unreal editor Output Log window you should see the following:
LogModelContextProtocol: Display: Client requested protocol version '2025-11-25', negotiated '2025-11-25'
LogModelContextProtocol: Initializing new session: 9f7dce394d21ad948de98bbf0a90f9e0
LogModelContextProtocol: Session initialized: 9f7dce394d21ad948de98bbf0a90f9e0
LogModelContextProtocol: Listing tools (3)
In Visual Studio Code, open the AI chat window using Ctrl+Shift+I
At this point, you can start asking it to do things like "Using unreal-mcp, tell me how many staticmesh actors are in this level" or "Using unreal-mcp, move the PlayerStart actor up 20 units", etc.
Your success will vary depending on the AI model you use. :)