Hey guys, in this series on actor essentials, we are going to be covering some basic knowledge regarding how to place in move around actors within your level. If you are new to the Unreal Engine, stay right here you are in the right spot. These are essential things to know. If you're experienced with the engine, you can feel free to skip this series of videos. So let's talk first and foremost about what is an actor? Well, an actor is some sort of asset that exists inside your level.

These can be anything from props, such as a chair or a lamp to audio actors, which may be a sound effect, or particles, something like fire or smoke that you see in your level as well. So let's talk about different ways that we can place actors in our level. The first way to place actors in your level is through what is Known as place mode. If you look over here in the upper left hand corner, you can see this Modes panel and across the top here we have a five different tabs. By default, we are in place mode. And with that selected along the left hand side, you've got different subcategories that you can filter down to.

We have this basic tab selected at the moment. So what I'm going to do is simply left click and drag in a tube actor into our level. coming under the lights category, you can left click and drag in a light actor. That'll eliminate your scene. Under our volumes category here, we could place something like a blocking volume by left clicking and dragging. These are those annoying invisible walls that you run into when you're playing games.

You can also place in something like a text render actor and I can search for that in the search bar right up here by typing in Text render. And when I drag this guy in, I'm just gonna raise them up in spin them around here a little bit, you can see that this will bring in an actor that displays some text. Okay, so that is how to play some actors from over here in placement mode. There are other ways. Down here, we have something known as the Content Browser. And you can drag and drop actors from here into your level as well.

Now, I'm currently showing you how to do all this with the third person blueprint template and I've got some Starter Content enabled as well. If I come under my stutter content folder, and actually if you don't see any of these folders over here, on the left hand side, you've got this button right here where you can show and hide them. Under my props folder right here. I've got different actors that I can place as well such as a chair or a bench Also in my Starter Content folder, I have a particle folder. And I could place something like a fire actor, or sparks or steam. Under my audio folder here, I could place in any audio actor.

We have different types of audio assets in here. But if I was to play something like my stutter background cue in here, and then I jump in and play. You can lightly hear some birds in breeze in the background. That's probably not the best example. There's some music. Let's do starter music.

Instead, drag and drop this guy in here and then play. You can hear some music as well. Okay, so that's another way that you can place actors in your level. There is another way and that is simply by right clicking Your level. Right down here in your right click menu you have some place actor options is Well, you've got things such as lights, primitives, and you've also got recently placed actors that you can select from here as well. There are also a few hotkey placements for placing things in your level.

One of them that is common is simply holding down the L key and left clicking, that'll place point lights in your level. Anytime you want to duplicate an actor in your level, there are a couple ways to do so. Let's select this cue right here. And if I if I was to simply hold down the Alt key, left click and drag, I could make a duplicate of this. Additionally, I could hit Ctrl plus W and that'll create a duplicate. And also, if you Right click on an actor.

There is a duplicate option under here is well I believe right there under edit, duplicate. Alright, so that's gonna do it for our discussion on placing actors. We will see you guys in the next one