The reference viewer tool for uassets is extremely useful.
But if you create a blueprint with an Actor Reference variable.
Place the blueprint in the level… use the eye-dropper to reference another object in the level.
Then later you try to delete the referenced object you get a low-information dialog.
"Actor XYZ is referenced by another Actor, do you really want to delete it?
For a big level with multiple developers this can be a problem.
At a minimum that dialog should give you the name(s)/count of the actors with references so you can investigate and see what you might be breaking.
Ideally right clicking on an actor in the level would use the same Reference Viewer interface to show you the relationships.
I’ve just started separating my current level into multiple sublevels and have hit this problem when I try to move an actor to another level when it has references; it’s impossible to tell what’s referencing it.
To make it worse, if you click ‘no’ to the question about deleting it, the object just gets silently duplicated which can be almost impossible to spot in a large level. There needs to at least be a ‘cancel’ button that just does nothing - don’t move the actor to the other level at all, don’t delete it, and definitely don’t duplicate it. That’s the behaviour I expected the ‘no’ button to have.
Chiming in to say that I’d also like to see better built-in tools to handle this kind of problem.
The only solution I’ve been able to find is to export the level to text (File->Export-> Select .t3d as export format). Now if you open up the .t3d map file you can manually search the level for references to specific assets. Manually search for the name of a given actor you’d like to move. You should find all the references eventually, but the process is not pleasant. As always, save beforehand, double check your work, and even keep a document if you have a particularly deep or intertwined network.
Obviously this is not an ideal workflow and the editor GUI should be both showing you other actors with references in the deletion confirmation dialog, as well as showing these references in the sadly lacking “Reference Viewer.” However if you really need to track down a reference and have no other solution, the approach I mentioned should work.
Hello,
Just to let Epic know I would be interested in such a feature as well. In 4.14.1 it seems to set references in other actors to None if user deletes a referenced object, but it still would be extremely useful in other situations to be able to view the list of these referencing actors.
Hi! I’m having a problem with this as well. I’ve decided to clean up my old project and now I must remember which meshes using certain materials that I want to replace with other materials and delete. Usually you place materials on certain mesh and it’s kind of tied to it, so you can simply change it on mesh in asset editor (I think), but I have meshes with materials applied to them inside the map and I can’t get the references to those meshes.