Scene Manager Reference

Document Summary: A reference for the Scene Manager in the Unreal Editor.

Document Changelog: Created by Dave Burke^?; maintained by Richard Nalezynski.

Introduction

The Scene Manager allows you to view the Actors for a current Level.

Opening the Scene Manager

The Scene Manager will be empty until a level is selected. In the LevelBrowser select a Level from the Level List, right-click the selected level, and choose Show Selected in Scene Manager from the context menu.

Scene Manager Overview

The Scene Manager is a table-based interface for viewing and maniplating the actors in a current Level in the World. Actors are displayed as rows in the table, which each column being a property of interest. This interface is well-suited for searching for actors by name, by type, or by property value, as well as for bulk-modifying actor property values.

The table is populated by selecting a level from the Level tab, right-clicking and choosing the "Show selected in Scene Manager" pop-up menu option.

The Scene Manager is divided into three regions: the focus and filter controls; the actor table; and the property window.

Scene Manager Layout

1. - Menu Bar
2. - Tool Bar
3. - Actors List
4. - Properties Pane

Menu Bar

View

• Refresh - refresh the Actors List.

Edit

• Delete - delete the selected Actors from the current Level.

Tool Bar

The Tool Bar consists of several unique controls for working with the Actors List.

• Level List - list populated with the persistent level and any streamed levels.
• Auto Focus? - whether or not to automatically focus the camera on an Actor when selected.
• Focus On Selected Actor - focuses the camera on the currently-selected Actor.
• Refresh - refreshes the Actors List.
• Delete - deletes the currently-selected Actor from the current Level.
• Actor Type List - filters the Actors List based on the type of Actor.
• Filter - filters the Actors List based on the text entered (can be anywhere in the Actor name).
• Show brushes? - whether or not to show Brushes in the Actors List.

Focus and Filter Controls

Along the top of the scene manager are the controls for modifying the contents of the actor table and for focusing on selected actors.

If the "Auto Focus?" check box is checked, selecting an actor in the table view will cause the main editor viewports to center on the selected actor.

The "F" button is used when "Auto Focus?" is disabled, and is used to manually focus the editor viewports on the actor selected in the actor table.

Click on the "R" button to manually refresh all scene manager panes.

Click on the "X" button to delete all selected actors.

The drop-down combo box on the left of the second row is a class-based filter. Selecting an actor class in this combo will cause only actors of that class to be displayed in the actor table.

The "Filter" field can be used to search for actors by name.

The "Show Brushes?" check box controls whether or not brush actors are displayed in the scene manager.

Actors List

The Actors List displays the Actors that are contained within the currently-selected level.

The Actors List is a table contains a list of actors belonging to a particular level or levels. Each Actor occupies a row, with each column being a particular actor property. Actors can be selected by clicking on any column in the Actor's row. When an Actor is selected, the Property Window on the right side of the Scene Manager is updated to contain that actor's properties.

The order in which Actors appear in the table can be organized by value; clicking on a property column causes the table view to sort by that column's property.

Currently, the properties viewed along the table columns are fixed. We're planning to change this so that any property can be viewable in the table view.

More Actors or properties can be viewed by using the scrollbars or resizing the Scene Manager window.

Properties Pane

The Properties Pane displays the properties for the currently-selected Actor in the Actors List.

The right side of the Scene Manager is occupied by a property window for any Actor(s) selected in the actor table. As with any other property window in UnrealEd, actor properties can be viewed and modified through the controls in this window.