Common Actor Operations

Assets Used

Underground Subway by SO.Art

Placing actors

Drag & Drop from the Content Browser

Using Context Menu

Place Actor submenu in context menu allows to place recently used actors quickly.

Selection section shows selected actor in asset browser

Replace actors

Using Context Menu

Duplicate actors

Alt + Drag

Press Alt and drag any gizmo axis to duplicate actor.

Note

This feature does not work inside of actor blueprint viewport.

Using Ctrl+D

Press Ctrl+D and then move duplicated actor

Using Context Menu

Use Edit in Context menu.

Using Copy Paste

Keyboard shortcut: CTRL+C to copy, CTRL+X to cut, CTRL+V to paste

Using Copy Paste Here

Paste Here function pastes copied actor at click location

Selecting Actors

Click on the actor to select it.

Hold Shift to select multiple actors.

Press ESC to deselect all selected actors.

Using outliner

Select Transparent/Translucent Actors

To select transparent/translucent actors, use Settings menu and enable Allow Translucent Selection

Info

Transparent actors are actors with material that has blend mode set to other than Opaque or Masked

Warning

This does not include bsp_actors

Marquee Selection

Press CTRL+ALT+LeftMouseButton and drag to enable marquee selection mode.

Press CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+LeftMouseButton and drag to add actors to selection using marquee.

Strict Box Selection

This function enforces that actors selected by marquee selection have to be fully encompassed by the selection rectangle.

Box select Occluded Objects

Enables marquee selection to also select objects behind other objects and outside the view.

Rename Actors

Using F2

• Press F2 to rename selected actors

Using context menu

• RightClick on the actor and use Edit ‣ Rename context menu function.

Note

You cannot rename multiple actors at once using this method.

Change Visibility

Hide Selected

Note

Once you go into play, simulate mode or switch Levels actors will reappear.

Using H

To hide actor in editor, press H

Using context menu

Show Only Selected

Use Show Only Selected to hide everything that is not selected.

Warning

This includes lights and sky box.

Show/Unhide selected actors

To unhide only selected actors, go to editor_outliner, and click on eye icon

Show/Unhide all actors

To unhide all hidden actors, press CTRL+H

Show/Hide Selected at startup

Once editor is in Play or Simulate state, selected actor will toggle it’s hide state.

Show all at startup

Any actors that had Show/Hide Selected at startup set will be visible when this function is enabled.

Actor Groups

Actor groups combine multiple actor instances into one easily movable element in the editor.

Actor Groups cannot be grouped (nested grouping), only merged. Attaching Actors feature allows this, not only with single actors but groups too.

Create Actor Group

Actors can be grouped to make moving multiple actors easier.

Using CTRL+G

Select actors and press CTRL+G to group them.

Using context menu

Adding new actors to group (Regroup)

New actors can be added to group anytime using Regroup

Keyboard shortcut: CTRL+G while new actor and selected actor group is selected.

Unlock Group - Select individual actors in a group

Unlocking group makes individual actors movable again until group is locked again.

Ungroup - Remove Group

Ungrouping removes the group bond between grouped actors.

Keyboard shortcut: SHIFT+G while group is selected

Allow Group Selection (Unlock all groups toggle)

Allow Group Selection temporarily disables all groups and group functionality.

Keyboard shortcut: CTRL+SHIFT+G

Removing all actors in a group

Pressing delete button while group is selected, will delete all actor instances in this group.

Warning message will be shown

Attaching Actors

Use Attach To in actor context menu.

Attaching will make selected actor transforms relative to other actor without making it a component of that actor.

Note

Attached actors will be visible in outliner hierarchy

Transforms are relative at the moment of attaching.

Removing parent attachment actor

After parent actor deletion, child actors are simply detached.

Nested attaching & Groups

Unlike Actor Groups, child actors can have other child actors attached to them and even whole groups.