Creating a prefab in Unreal Engine 4

Development Asset Creation
1

Hi all,

I’m looking to combine a set of actors together in the content browser for simple reuse throughout the level. They are a static mesh, a particle effect, and a light (it’s a torch). I’ve spent some time in Unity recently and it’s got a nifty feature where you can drag any set of objects into the content browser to create a single ‘prefab’ which when edited changes the properties of the in-world copies accordingly. This would mean I could place all my torches and adjust them all at once throughout the level. Is there a way to do this in UE4?

I’ve heard rumbles of using blueprints and coding classes but I have exactly 0% understanding of blueprints outside materials, terrain and particles, and not a speck of knowledge on C++, so I’m opting to ask here to try and avoid that.

If what I am looking for does not exist, does anyone know of a clear and simple guide to the blueprints method?

(If this thread is in the wrong forum, please let me know and I’ll move it)

Cheers,

2

create a blueprint and add the mesh, particle and light, place the blueprint in the world where you want them. to change them all globally, you just edit the bp from the content browser and it will propagate through to the others as the new default. you can also then click on each individual one in the world and adjust the properties for just that on in the details panel if you need to, but this is considered an override, thus it wont follow the global setting until reset to default basically it works the same as a material instance, just with actual actors.

from there you could look up simple node snippets like flickering lights, add it to the blueprint, and it will go to everyone

3

I’ll give that a go! Thank you for the help.