Loading Engine Assets in C++

Development Programming & Scripting C++
1

I want to load assets (Reference them in my code)…
As an example, I need to set a USoundBase’s value to a default value so, I’ll need to point to an asset in my project’s content. How can I achieve this?

2

This usually isn’t the best thing to do, but you can create a hardcoded reference like FSoftObjectPath("/Game/Path/To/AssetName.AssetName") and call TryLoad() on it. It’ll load and you can cast the UObject* to the correct type. Loading from disk can take a long time, but this is a cheap call if the asset is loaded already.

Usually though (if this is on a UObject or Actor or in a UStruct) you just want to declare a UPROPERTY pointer with an asset picker UI, which is easy enough:

UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, Category="MyCategory")
USoundBase* SoundBase;

That’ll give you an asset picker dropdown where you can choose the asset to reference. Then SoundBase will point to that asset.

1 Like
3

Hi. Thanks for the reference to FSoftObjectPath. That was exactly what I needed.
Yeah, I don’t want to use UPROPERTY because I’ll have to re-assign a repetitive asset over and over…

Thanks!

4

“Repetitive picking” sounds like you’re not considering blueprints, and blueprint inheritance, and, most importantly, bulk/matrix editing.

You really should define at least one blueprint class for each of your C++ classes, and use that wherever you need an actual-instance. And, ideally, everywhere you need an actual-instance, make it a TSubclassOf<> UPROPERTY so that you can switch things around in the editor at will.

You don’t need to use the graph scripting at all for Blueprints, just the data editing/inheritance/wiring makes a lot of sense on its own.

5

Hi and thanks for your concern.

I do that for some specific stuff but in this case, I was just dealing with one component variable that I thought creating a blueprint class would be a waste for this.

Also, it’s understandable that blueprints would make it easier but is it really something that I “should” do? How beneficial can it be from other aspects?

6

Blueprints let you set default values for properties, and use configurable classes/assets. As long as C++ works for you, sure, you can make do entirely without! But if you find that you need to put in hard-coded asset paths, why not make that asset/class name instead be a configurable value and use a Blueprint? It buys a lot of flexibility, at very little additional cost (either runtime or maintenance.)

1 Like
7

Absolutely. Thank you!

I’ll utilize blueprints a bit more from now.

Thank you for your time!