So I do realize that there’s an editor for static meshes, and also an editor for BP actors, but what If I just want to add components to an empty actors, and fine tune their positions and stuff? isn’t there a way to open it in a separate window? it’s clunky to edit in the middle of your project
I’m assuming no, just need a confirmation
I’m not sure I understand what you mean. What are you trying to do?
You can always create new blueprint actor and add stuff there or you can add new components to existing ones.
Help me understand please.
you know when you drag an empty actor to the viewport? you can add components to it on the right panel. it works like adding components to a blueprint actor, but it doesn’t have it’s separate window with its own viewport like bp actors, you are dealing with it in the main viewport. this actor also doesn’t show in the content browser, it exists only in the main viewport.
or at least this is what I think. I just wanted to know if this actor, which is not a blueprint actor, could be added to the content browser and edited on a separate viewport, or if I need to turn it to a blueprint actor in order to do so.
You could technically add an empty one and then fill it this way but it’s no practical. If you delete this actor from the level in error, it’s gone for good. Isn’t it better to have a base actor and then make children or simply duplicate it and manipulate components via code? What is the end goal here?
it’s just out of curiosity, doesn’t need to be this way.
see I have a door mesh, a knob mesh and a lock mesh, and I wanted to add a few doors to my scene. it would be more practical if the door had 2 knobs and a lock attached to it already, so I added an empty actor to the scene, and added the door, knobs and lock to it as static mesh components.
then when I was trying to position the knobs and the lock in the correct spot, I realized how difficult it is to move and rotate stuff precisely when you’re in the middle of your scene. you could hide all the unselected actors yes, but then your lighting gets messed up. another thing that makes it clumsy, is that this actor isn’t in the origin
t’s easier when you’re doing it in a blueprint that has an exclusive viewport for all your components. I also noticed that this actor only exists inside this level, it’s not stored in your content browser like bp actors. so that’s what I did, I converted this actor into a BP and it’s all fine, but this door won’t have any code, it doesn’t need to be a blueprint
so I thought maybe regular non blueprint actors could have their own interface like blueprint actors and I’m just unaware of it, this is why I asked this here
Blueprints are exactly for that.
They are a collection of Components.
It doesnt matter whether they have code or not.