Welcome to the official documentation. If you encounter an issue not covered here, please use the Discord link at the bottom left of the menu to reach out for support.
All the tools you need to speed up your level design process!
Actor tools & Utilities:
Asset batch:
One-click material creator:
Custom engine shortcuts:
Selection lock:
Highly customizable plugin with settings available.Important/Additional Notes: All the assets shown in this video are only examples, they are not supplied with the plugin.
I recommend disabling the plugin before building the game, for compatibility reasons.
If you don’t see the toolbar icon be sure to have the plugin enabled in Edit > Plugins > Installed
To hide/show the new outliner column, right click on the column label and check “Selection Lock”
By right-clicking on the tab you can hide the tab name or dock the tab with the UE Sidebar System
You can enable the “compact mode” for your shortcuts in the plugin settings. (click the refresh shortcuts button)
LINEAR DUPLICATION:
GRID CREATOR:
DUPLICATE AROUND:
DUPLICATE ALONG SPLINE:
SCATTER DUPLICATE:
SMART LOCALISATION:
Based on a line trace above the actor LDA2 will try to follow the slope while duplicating. You can change the Z offset and the length of the line trace in the plugin settings.
SMART ROTATION:
Based on the impacts normals or the impacts locations LDA2 will try it’s best to adapt the current actor rotation with the slope angle while duplicating.
PREVIEW:
The preview button allows you to preview all your actions, the bounding box of the object is used (in the viewport, show>advanced>bounds).
If your selection contains a static mesh, LDA2 will draw a static mesh preview.The static mesh preview drawing can impact your editor performances, you can tweak this feature in the plugin settings.
DUPLICATE AS INSTANCE:
After you duplicate actors LDA2 will try to batch every static mesh as instanced static meshes.
Instanced meshes are “virtual” clone in your level, LDA2 will batch the source actors components to use instancing as much as possible.
It Will generate an actor with instanced static mesh component(s).
HUGE performance improvement potential.
LDA2 uses the UE merge actor framework, you can tweak the settings in the plugin settings.
More information on instancing are available in the video below.
REFERENCE ACTOR:
PLACE AROUND:
SET FOCUS:
RANDOMIZE TRANSFORM:
SELECTION TOOL:
Select an actor and use this tool to select similar actor (same label/class/tags)
RENAME ACTORS:
OUTLINER ORGANIZER:
By clicking on the button "Organizer" all the actors of the level will be automatically arranged in folders. Open the plugin settings to customize the auto-organize feature (Actor-Outliner Organizer section).
S-M SWAPPER:
LDA2 will find every “From SM” reference in your level and will swap it with the “To SM” reference. The default SM material will be used (default material set on the asset itself).
MEASURE:
Move your viewport camera where you want to measure and place gizmos with the Point A/B button. You can also spawn a human skeleton reference in the level or attach it to your view to check the scale of your level design relative to a human.
STATISTICS:
Based on the “Actor-Outliner Organizer” settings, LDA2 will Count the actor by category.LDA2 will also count the total triangle count in your selection.
ADD A NEW NOTE:
EDIT THE TARGET OF THE NOTE:
Because the note is a child of an object if you change the scale or the rotation of the target the note can have weird behavior. If so, click on the “Refresh all notes” button.
Please do not edit a note outside of the LD Assistant plugin (in the BP detail window for example).
Delete the notes if you disable the plugin or the note actor will be corrupted!
The rotation tool allows rotating actors locally with the defined amount.The random rotation will add random rotation depending on the X, Y, Z boolean values.
Use the deletion tools at your own risk. LDA2 can’t be held accountable for breaking your project. Double-check every asset LDA2 is trying to delete/rename. It’s highly recommended to use a versioning tool (GitHub, Perforce…, etc.).
PROCESS:
ADD PREFIXES:
Based on the plugin settings “Prefix Map” LDA2 will rename the selected assets. LDA2 will name the asset based on its native class.Example: A custom blueprint call MyBP is gonna be renamed BP_MyBP even if you add BU_ as prefix in the prefix map for the class “MyBP”, the native class is still a blueprint.
PROCESS:
CHANNEL PACKING:
If you use channel packing in a texture, add arm in the name and LDA2 will:
Create shortcuts based on the shortcuts created in the plugin settings:
Windows:
Functions (set the value in the “argument” field):
Process scripted action:
Process project cleaner:
Warning:UE needs to load every asset under the selected folder, if your project is big this might freeze the engine for a long time, be patient :-)
The scripts are also gonna fix every redirector under the selected folder, this process will clean your asset database and might require some time.You can set protected folders and classes in the plugin settings.
Use the deletion tools at your own risk. LDA2 can’t be held accountable for breaking your project.
Double-check every asset LDA2 is trying to delete/rename. It’s highly recommended to use a versioning tool (GitHub, Perforce…, etc.).
With the selection lock tool, exclude specific actors from selection, especially useful when you “square select” actors (ALT+CTRL+hold click).
You can flag an actor as “unselectable” with:
To hide/show the new outliner column, right click on the column label and check “Selection Lock”
Note: Hotkeys are available for Lock/Unlock. See Hotkey section.
Prefix map: The class in the settings is the native class, you cannot add a specific prefix to a user created blueprint for example.
Smart Location/Rotation settings: If the smart features are not working correctly in your specific use case, tweak the values and enable “show trace debug” to understand what is happening with the smart features calculations.
Function shortcuts: Hover the function name to know what you need to do to make the shortcut work. Some functions need arguments, and some don’t.
If the smart settings results isn’t behaving the way you want to, tweak the plugin settings until it suit your use case.
Smart location: By default I create a line trace above the actor but if your actor is very large you might want to use a box trace based on the actor bounds.
Prevent smart duplication: If the line trace hits an actor with a tag “LDA2NoDupli” (can be changed in the plugin settings), LDA2 can skip the duplication above this actor.
Smart rotation: Based on the bound size multiplier I create 4 line trace above the actor. Depending on your use case:
- Normal based: The smart rotation will be based on the average impact normal to create a rotation (so if every surface is horizontal/flat, the average normal is horizontal/flat.)
- Location based: I will create a rotation based on a plane rotation created from the 4 impact points.