below are some examples of the type of thing that Unfathomable mentioned.
The first picture shows how you could use a line trace to locate an object. in this example we draw a line from the character to a location 500 units in front of the character. then the first actor this line hits is returned as the out hit pin. we then compare this result to the class that we are looking for via the equal (==) node. so if the hit actors class is the same as the the class we are comparing to, then the branch is true and we destroy the actor. now there is variation to this method where you use a line trace for objects or you could use a shape trace like a box trace which is more similar to your current setup.
the second picture shows the proximity method. i made it as a function here but its not necessary. the way this one works is that it gets all actors of the tree class that are overlapping the character then compares each to see which is closer. let me try to explain this better. lets say your character is overlapping 5 trees, you begin by setting the closest tree variable to the first tree on the list (tree 1). you then take the next tree and compare its distance to the character to the distance of tree 1 to the player. if tree 2 is closer then it gets set as the closest tree, if its not closer then we move on to tree 3. you do this for all trees and when your done your variable is set to the closest tree. ok now as an example of the above lets say we have 3 trees with the following distance to the player, tree 1: 3Meter, tree 2: 1meter, and tree 3: 5meter. so we set tree one as the closest since its the first, then we compare tree 2, so we say is 1 meter less than 3? yes so we set tree 2 as the closest. then we move on to tree 3 and compare again, is 5 meter less than 1? no so we dont set the variable.
hope that helps a bit.
