HISM Editor Is Incredibly Difficult To Use

[OohWowow]

Summary

In UEFN, the HISM editor is borderline impossible to use at scale.

When creating new static mesh instances in a HISM component, you do not get access to any gizmos on the instance. The only way to reposition the instance is by directly setting the values of the transform. The only feasible way to position these instances is by copy-pasting transforms from a proxy mesh.

When selecting an instance that is a part of a HISM component, you have no indication of which instance in the array that is. For HISMs with a large number of instances, this makes it nearly impossible to know which transform needs adjusted to reposition it.

In UE5 proper, static mesh actors can be bulk converted to instances. However, in UEFN, this workflow is completely unavailable. This would massively speed up the creation process of creating HISMs.

Please select what you are reporting on:

Creative

What Type of Bug are you experiencing?

UI/Tools

Steps to Reproduce

No Gizmo:

1. Place empty actor from place actors panel
2. Add Hierarchical Instanced Static Mesh Component
3. Set static mesh used in component
4. Add instance to array of HISM
5. Click on a HISM instance
6. Observe transform gizmo only affects root actor, not instance

No Conversion:

1. Place several static mesh actors
2. Select all static mesh actors using the same static mesh asset
3. Right click selection
4. Observe no option to convert to instances

Expected Result

Can reposition static mesh instances with 3D gizmos

Have some indication of which instance is being transformed/selected in the array

Have the ability to bulk-convert static mesh actors to instances

Observed Result

Cannot reposition static mesh instances with 3D gizmos

Have no indication of which instance is being transformed/selected in the array

Have no ability to bulk-convert static mesh actors to instances

Platform(s)

PC

Additional Notes

This makes it completely infeasible to use mesh instances at scale, and it only makes sense to use mesh instances at scale.

[OohWowow]

Additionally, any custom per-instance data used is not separated by instance in the editor UI. You have to manually keep track of how many floats are being used per instance, and count by that increment to determine which float is associate with which instance.

This once again makes this tool infeasible to use at scale

[JUNO_006]

You get access to per instance gizmos (both ISMs/HISMs) by double clicking on the instance, single clicks will revert to the root component, double clicks will select the instance, as for the bulk operations, the “Actor” menu is missing from UEFN entirely, that has all the batching goodies, so I think that’d be more of a feature request for it to be exposed to UEFN. Cheers.

[OohWowow]

I don’t know if I had missed it before, or if it is new in UEFN, but as of 38.11 you can convert static mesh actors to instances via Modelling Mode → XForm → Harvest Instances

wanted to share for anyone who comes across this

[Bug-Reporter]

FORT-1000243’s status has changed to ‘Ready for QA’. A member of the QA department is investigating the issue.

[Fallen-Champ]

I think some of these updates are messing with HISM

Currently I am having a hard time attaching materials, some show / work and others show the material icon but the mesh is default grey check texture

Another thing is when you double click a HISM if you then start selecting others from the same HISM each one you select there should be visible a yellow bounding box line around them, for me right now this is not working - over the updates sometimes it works then it doesn’t.

Something like this needs locking in so it doesn’t change, it is starting to get silly now these same bugs repeating over and over.