November 17, 2025 • 3 min read

Teaching Unreal Engine 5.6 + Git: From Backup Tool to Production Pipeline

Last week I ran a hands-on lab where we combined Unreal Engine 5.6, Git, and CI/CD to help game developers work more like a studio team and less like a solo dev just “backing up files.”

The session used a small teaching project called UEGitWorkshop — an Unreal Engine 5.6 demo built specifically to show clean, professional Git workflows for game development.

If you’re building games in Unreal and still feel unsure about Git, branching, or CI, this is exactly the kind of workflow you want in place before your project grows.

📺 Full workshop video – Unreal Engine 5.6 + Git + CI/CD (UEGitWorkshop): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP2YWmLSV7U

What We Covered in the Workshop

In about 90 minutes we walked through a complete loop: from cloning the repo to making changes, opening a Pull Request, and letting CI validate everything.

1. Setting up a studio-style Unreal repo

We started by looking at how a serious Unreal project should live in Git:

  • .gitattributes + Git LFS for Unreal assets like .uasset and .umap
  • A proper Unreal .gitignore so Intermediate, Binaries, autosaves, and DerivedData stay out of the repo
  • Shared editor settings through .editorconfig and .vscode/settings.json
  • A .clangd configuration so Unreal C++ has working IntelliSense in VS Code

The goal is simple: a repository that is fast to clone, safe to share, and easy to maintain over the lifetime of the game.

2. Automating Unreal builds with Python

Instead of right-clicking .uproject files and hoping things work, we used a Python script, build_ue.py, to:

  • Generate Visual Studio project files
  • Build the UEGitWorkshopEditor target from the command line
  • Launch Unreal Engine 5.6 and show a small “Hello World” subsystem running in-game

This is the same pattern you can plug into your continuous integration setup later.

3. Teaching Git as a workflow, not just a backup

We then focused on Git discipline — the part that really matters in production:

  • Configuring Git LFS and local Git hooks
  • Enforcing Conventional Commits via a commit-msg hook (no more stuff_fixed_final_final commits)
  • Creating short-lived feat/* branches instead of committing directly to main
  • Keeping history linear and readable so it’s easy to debug and review

Each participant edited a small C++ class, committed with a proper feat(...) message, pushed their branch, and opened a Pull Request.

4. Using GitHub Actions for Unreal sanity checks

Finally, we looked at GitHub Actions and the unreal-sanity-check.yml workflow:

  • Automatic validation of project structure
  • Checks for asset naming conventions (e.g. BP_, M_, L_ prefixes)
  • A downloadable report artifact showing the status of each run

This gives teams a lightweight way to keep their main branch stable, even when multiple developers are working on Blueprints, levels, and C++ at the same time.

How Toucan Studios Can Help

I’m Sreyeesh Garimella, a technical artist and pipeline engineer. Through my company Toucan Studios (🌐 toucan.ee), I help:

  • Game studios design Unreal Engine + Git + CI/CD pipelines that scale
  • Schools and universities run practical labs like UEGitWorkshop for their students
  • Indie and solo developers structure their Unreal projects so they can safely grow into small teams later

If you’re a recruiter looking for someone who can bridge Unreal Engine, DevOps, and teaching, or a team / school that wants this kind of workflow training for your developers, I’d be happy to chat.

📺 Watch the full workshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP2YWmLSV7U

🌐 Learn more: https://toucan.ee