I have a a mini scene that has quite a few objects in it (essentially a mini map) that I would like to be able to place into a level one or more times as a prefab package. Is there a way to do this? Recreating the scene each time from scratch is no fun.
Have a look at Level Streaming
I don’t think level streaming will work for me. I need to be able to place my sub-scene into a map tile more or less randomly. For example, suppose the mini scene is a small village. It would be nice to be able to drop the prefab village anywhere I like into a map in a drag and drop manner. I know this could be done using a blueprint. But the number of actors makes doing a blueprint a bit unwieldy.
I dont see why making a blueprint is any different then making a level.
And you should be able to push all level items you want into a blueprint already without any addon.
I remember doing this to optimize stuff at least.
I’m not sure as to the logic of what it is your trying to do. Are you looking to build prefabs as a construction element or able to spawn a fabricated village in real time like a Sim City kind of thing?
The total number of components either way is going to be the total number of components so no matter the path “unwieldy” is going to be a consideration no matter the packaging. Can you give an example of why you would think this would be the case?
As a level stream one could make an actor bp so that the level can be placed where you wish, aka Sim City. To convert a mini-level to a BP one can select all of the components and from the blueprint drop down select “Convert selected components to blueprint”.
I think - mind you, think - that what he’s saying is that he’s placed a bunch of stuff in a level and that it looks just like he wants it to look, but now he needs to duplicate it.
In which case, your/my suggestion of just converting all the items to BP is probably the best way to go.
level streaming would surely be better in the end - but he can do that even after merging all things into one BP for easy deployment.
The number of items is around 100 or so. That makes for a pretty big blueprint. It also makes editing more of a challenge should changes need to be made later on.
I experimented with the conversion to blueprint functionality and it does work for simple prefabs such as those that contain only meshes and decals. However, it can’t nest blueprints. For example, the scene that I want to prefab has scripts that builds instanced meshes attached to a spline. The conversion process runs the spline blueprint, but converts the instanced meshes into a pile of regular static meshes. The process also seems to have trouble deciding where the origin is.
What seems to work is to open the editor, select the objects you want to prefab and do a copy to the clipboard. Then open a new text document and paste the contents of the clipboard to the new text file. (Notepad works well for this.) The output seems to be a json file. The text document can be copied into the clipboard at a later date and pasted into your map.