Proper way to re-use a blueprint for multiple instances of a mesh?

[anonymous_user_c0f72f6f]

@Arlyn

I don’t have experience with Unity so I’m not sure what a pre-fab is but it sounds like they probably do act similarly.

In Unity, everything is pretty much a game object. Rather it’s a cube, a light, a C# script.

As an example, if I put a cube and in my Unity scene, then applied a material to it and then attached a C# script that would rotate the cube, I could then save that back down into my games “content” section and it automatically becomes a “prefab” where I can drag that prefab back into my scene and it will have all the properties ect already set. I could then just reuse that exact same thing over and over.
The script itself knows how to get the game object it’s attached to, grab the transform, and it’s the transform that the script is actually rotating. So, basically, this rotate script can be applied to ANY game object that has a transform rather it’s a cube, a light, a detailed out mesh etc…

@Arlyn

Just to avoid confusion, I’ve never actually heard these referred to as Public Variables before (even though that’s what they are). Typically they’re referred to as material
parameters.

Thanks for the heads up, What’s called a Level in Unreal is called a Scene in Unity. I’m trying to be sure that I’m using the proper terms.

@Arlyn

BPs are very different than using a mesh. The mesh doesn’t have game logic where BPs do. So if you place a mesh in a level, its basically just a scenery prop and you won’t be able to dynamically change the material parameters form the editor (like you can with the BP).

Sure, I do understand the distinction there. The truck mesh is just something that sits there until you add functionality to it using a BP. Same concept in Unity, have to attach a script to it to make it do something. I think my comment got a little murky and probably wasn’t clear.

@Arlyn

For your truck example, the Truck BP can handle all the generic truck things: driving, honking, fuel usage, etc… and you can set different meshes and materials for each instances. You can either do this manually in the editor or at run time through game logic.

And that’s what I’m trying to figure out. How do I reuse a blueprint. Lets say that I want to create a BP that can work with my material to expose the two color values. That I can then attach to either a car mesh or a truck mesh and modify the material. Is there a way to “drag and drop” a BP onto a vehicle in the level?

I hope this makes since. If not, I can go into a lot more detail about how the base material and the instance material work. And then how the truck BP was using that material in the construction script of the truck bp.