Tutorial 14 – Using rdBPtools with UE5 Light-Weight Instances

Last Updated: 15th December 2022

rdBPtools is compatible with the new Light-Weight Instances plugin that was introduced in UE5.

If you don’t know much about this, here is a good link discussing them:

https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/zweW/light-weight-instances-ue5

It’s very simple, just follow the steps below.

Step 1. Enable the Plugin

The first step is to enable the plugin for your project, just go to the Edit Menu in the UE main window and select the “Plugins…” option at the bottom of the menu.

Search for “Light Weight” and tick the tickbox to enable it, restart UE.

Step 2. Add a BlueprintClass with a Static Mesh

Now Create a new Blueprint Class based on an actor – in that Blueprint add a StaticMesh component and set it to your mesh.

Step 4. Add a Light Weight Instance Manager.

Before we can convert those meshes to instances, we need to create a LightWeight Instance Manager. Right-Click in your projects Content Browser and select “New Blueprint”. Select the LightWeightInstanceManager as the base.

Give it a name, then open it in the Blueprint Editor.

Find the “Represented Class” and set it to our Blueprint.

Step 4. Convert to Light Weight Instances.

Now just select your actors in the level and choose the “Convert to Light Weight Instances” from the Actor Menu in the main window.

Another Way to use Light Weight Instances.

Another way to use Light Weight Instances with rdBPtools is to hook the Instance Creation method directly.

You can just create a SubClass of BP_rdContainBase, and add the function below:

(To expose the Location,Rotation and Scale pins, right click on the Transform pin and select “Split”)

This adds the actors to the level directly, so it doesn’t really work in the way that this was designed – but it illustrates the potential and where you can take the code yourself.

rdBPtools will continue to add features supporting Light Weight Instances.