Xodius Studios Blog #8 - Merged Actors! - By Justin Palmer

 

 

 

Xodius Studios Blog #8

Merged Actors!

Author:Justin Palmer
Published: 04/21/23 17:00

The Problem:

     The main problem this week was remaking the Intro/Tutorial Level to better 'square up' without gaps between walls and floors. Remaking all the walls and floors takes time and time is money!  Luckily Michael discovered a way to create assets using splines to extend them repeatedly in one direction, but this only solved having to click repeatedly, and I still had to line up the meshes perfectly.  I knew there had to be an easier way when I created the SAME hallway a third time!  So investigation took hold and I found the 'Merged Actor' Tool, but with some drawbacks in Unreal 4.27.2!

 




Problem Solution:

    The easiest solution was to select all the objects at once by using Alt key and clicking each Asset to merge together, like a hallway you want to 'cookie cutter'. Right Click the group of assets and choose 'Merge Actors' to make a popup appear.  Here you have 3 options, and I chose the middle option 'Harvest Geometry From Selected Actors And Make Them Into A Single Mesh'.  This turned all the Actors into a single Actor and allowed copying and placing them much more easily!  This saves precious time when level creating and also improves performance, by not rendering parts of the asset that are not needed.

 

 

 

P.S. - In Unreal 4.27.2 once merged together, the Actors seem to get a 'local position' from their 'world position'.  To fix this issue, I would move all the Actors together to the origin (0,0,0), and then 'Merge Actors'.  Otherwise, the matrix to manipulate the Merged Actors may be off-screen when you try to manipulate your merged object!

 


 

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