Finding references show in reference viewer in UE5.2

Development Programming & Scripting
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1

I have been doing some work implementing some open source blueprints into my UE5.2 project. There are multiple files involved and some of them are quite complex.

In many cases I have to replace a file that is referenced with a modified copy of that file. This involves find all the references to the old file, replacing them with the new file, changing all the referenced variables etc.

In a few cases I’ve done everything I can to find all of them, but reference viewer shows there is still a reference to the old file somewhere, but shows no further details, and no information to help me track down what that reference is. More than once I have spent several hours tracking it down, and in one case I’m still unable to find it after several days.

Is there some way I can have reference viewer show me what the reference is that it’s showing? Or any other solution to track down these mystery references?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

2

So I sort of answered my own question. I exported the BP as a “.COPY” file, and using a text search in my favourite text editor I was able to find the reference.

However I’m hoping there is a better way than this?

3

Bump. Any other suggestions at all?

4

I am encountering the same issue, the references are a bit unclear, I don’t know what causes them. Is it a field, is it a node? Sometimes there are also some ghost references that don’t seem to be caused by anything and it is very painful to debug. When I say ghost reference, I mean a reference that I can’t see even in the .COPY exported UE file.

Note: sometimes I can find the reference by the name in the BP editor. If I reference a texture ‘Whatever’ I try search for ‘Whatever’ and sometimes it finds something.

5

For posterity I can say the following about ghost references:

  1. Create a BP class named ‘SkillSystem’ and make it use a certain class, let’s say ‘Hero’
  2. Create a BP class and call it ‘GenericHero’, and make ‘Hero’ inherit from ‘GenericHero’
  3. Switch the node in ‘SkillSystem’ from using the ‘Hero’ class to ‘GenericHero’

Sometimes the result is that a ghost reference to ‘Hero’ is still kept. It can be seen when exporting the asset using ‘Asset Actions’ from the ‘Right Click’ menu to a SkillSystem.COPY object.

How to fix:

  1. Search in the exported *.COPY file for the offending node containing a reference to ‘Hero’ or ‘Hero_C’
  2. Search/Identify for that node in the BP graph
  3. Delete the node in the node, and re-create it from scratch using GenericHero
  4. Save file
  5. Exit-enter the editor again and check the references again