Understanding Blueprint Instanced Lights

Development Rendering
1

Can anyone help me understand Blueprint Instanced Lights? I’ve followed this tutorial

and set up a scene.

What seems to happen is that if I edit any of the parameters on already instanced lights, ie Intensity or Color, the ‘link’ is broken with the parent BP class. ie if I change those same parameters in the BP class I don’t see the changes reflected in the light instance. Confusing.

2

Careful with the terminology, I had a quick look at this vid, there is no parent blueprint :wink:

This is just making a light blueprint and dragging instances of it into the map.

What problem are you having exactly? Do you get an error?

3

Coming from Unity this process seemed a lot simpler. Its just creating Prefabs.
What I’m noticing is that if I edit the parameters of an instanced light directly in the Details window, the link with the Blueprint seems broken. ie if I try and change those same parameters within the Blueprint nothing changes.

4

Understand these are individual instances of a class; they are not linked. The values set in the blueprint editor are default values for the class, not synced values. If you want them to sync from editing them within the editor, you can:

  1. Apply your changes to the blueprint by clicking the blue “Edit Blueprint” dropdown and selecting “Apply Instance Changes to Blueprint”.
  2. In the construction script, GetAllActors of your light class and set their intensities to the light you are editing.
  3. Have them get their value from one common place.

Also, in the video, he didn’t have to delete all the lights to replace them. He could’ve selected them all, right clicked, and selected “Replace Selected Actors with…”.