How set something to a thing in the content browser?

Development Rendering
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1

I have a APawn class here being used to delegate events in the scene and it holds a reference to another AActor in the scene. I want to get the static mesh component from that actor and set its material.

UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Refs")
AActor *actor;

void GameManager::InputEvent(){

    actor->GetStaticMeshComponent()->SetMaterial(0, SomeColor);
}

SomeColor is the name of the material in my content browser and I don’t know how to properly reference it in code to hand off to that parameter.

2

If you want the one who uses your editor to specify the material, then you should add it as a property in your pawn class

UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category="SomeCategory")
UMaterialInterface* SomeColor;

If you want to provide a default value for SomeColor then you can use FObjectFinder in the constructor.

If you don’t want the material to be always loaded you can use TAssetPtr instead of UMaterialInterface*, it’s just like TWeakObjectPtr but for asset.

The other solution is, provided that you have the path name to the material, you can use LoadObject, e.g:

 void GameManager::InputEvent(){
 	SomeColor = LoadObject<UMaterialInterface>(NULL, TEXT("/Game/Materials/M_ShinyRedVelvet.M_ShinyRedVelvet"));
 	if ( SomeColor )
 	{
 		actor->GetStaticMeshComponent()->SetMaterial(0, SomeColor);
 	}
 }
3

Hey Ghost,
You can get your StaticMeshComponent like this.

auto StaticMeshComponent = Cast<UStaticMeshComponent>(actor->GetComponentByClass(UStaticMeshComponent::StaticClass()));

if(StaticMeshComponent)
{
    StaticMeshComponent->SetMaterial(0, SomeMaterial);
}

I would recommend you to look into DynamicMaterialInstances
With them you can change the Values of Parameters in your Material.
For example:
you have a parameter “Color” in your Material which is defaultly blue.

If you create now a Dynamic Instance of you Material by:

UMaterialInstanceDynamic* MID = StaticMeshComponent->CreateDynamicMaterialInstance(0, StaticMeshComponent->GetMaterial(0));

//Change Color to Red
StaticMeshComponent->SetMaterial(0, MID);
					MID->SetVectorParameterValue(TEXT("Color"), FVector(1,0,0));

The best way to use Dynamic Material Instances, is, to store them as members in your class or by:

UMaterialInstanceDynamic* MID = Cast<UMaterialInstanceDynamic>(StaticMeshComponent->GetMaterial(0));

if(MID)
{
    //Change Parameter Values
}

Greetings :wink: