Actor Tick in Editor

Development Programming & Scripting C++
1

Hi,

Is there any special things to do to have a Actor set on the level to tick in Editor?

My actor have some parrellel task to exeute while in Editor, and I can’t check if the backgroundtask is done as the Tick is not called.

Thanks,

2

Do someone know at least if this is possible?

thanks,

3

Are you saying you only want the actor to tick if you’re in the editor?

4

Yes that’s exactly my needs.
Someone on the answer just told me it’s impossible. So I look to move my code in a Component that can tick in the editor only…
Just sad that we can’t control the actor in the same way.

5

Just put this in your constructor and make sure the blueprint default is to start with tick enabled. It absolutely does work



if (WITH_EDITOR)
{
	PrimaryActorTick.bCanEverTick = true;
	PrimaryActorTick.bStartWithTickEnabled = true;
}
6

Hi,

I already put:



PrimaryActorTick.bCanEverTick = true;
PrimaryActorTick.bStartWithTickEnabled = true;

in the class constructor and no tick function was called.

I will double check the BP defaults to see if the issue came from here.

Thanks,
Ps: Just to be sure, when you said ticking in the editor means ticking while editing the level and not PIE, right?

7

No, I meant ticking while PIE.

8

ok… so yes in PIE I can make it tick.

My needs is to have the actor ticking while editing. I think the path to go is the Component that can tick in Editor (as far as I read it… need to test it ^^).

9

I haven’t tried it, but I believe overriding AActor::ShouldTickIfViewportsOnly to return true should do what you’re after.

10

I confirm that ShouldTickIfViewportsOnly with return true did the trick!

Thanks,

1 Like
11

Can you tell me how you defined the override? I tried the following in my header file:



#pragma once

UCLASS()
class AProceduralStreetActor : public AActor
{
	GENERATED_BODY()

public:	
	AProceduralStreetActor(const FObjectInitializer& ObjectInitializer);

	virtual bool ShouldTickIfViewportsOnly() override;
};

And in my source file:

bool AProceduralStreetActor::ShouldTickIfViewportsOnly()
{
	return true;
}

But the compiler is telling me “‘AProceduralStreetActor::ShouldTickIfViewportsOnly’: method with override specifier ‘override’ did not override any base class methods”. But I can override
Tick and BeginPlay the same way? What am I doing wrong?

12

might be the const modifier that you missed:
virtual bool ShouldTickIfViewportsOnly() const override;

13

Thanks Evince, that was my fault.

15

I cannot seem to get this working in UE 5.1. The Editor acts like there is no Tick but works fine when in PIE.

void ACameraViewpoint::Tick(float DeltaTime)
{
#if WITH_EDITOR
	EditorTick(DeltaTime);
#endif
	
	Super::Tick(DeltaTime);
}

bool ACameraViewpoint::ShouldTickIfViewportsOnly() const
{
	return true;
}
16

Here’s a sample that’s working for me.

For the above question I might suggest making sure that ShouldTickIfViewportsOnly is declared correctly in the .h file like below for me. Otherwise I’d put a breakpoint in tick to see if it’s actually reaching your EditorTick function. Also, I don’t think it would matter much but convention is typically to put “Super” functions at the top of their derived function, maybe that’s screwing something up?

// In MyActorClass.h

public:

	// Allows us to draw debug shapes in the blueprint editor
	virtual bool ShouldTickIfViewportsOnly() const override
	{
		return true;
	}