rdInst Tutorial 6.1 – rdProxies (Live Actors)

Last Updated: 20th March 2025
Tutorial Created using rdInst 1.50

rdProxies are pretty much the opposite of a traditional proxy!

In normal reference, a proxy is a simplified mesh or set of meshes (or various other rendering systems) which is swapped to when the camera is out of a specified distance.

The rdProxy paradigm, where the proxy is the live actor swapped in within a distance from the camera is used in rdInst to help visualize your level as instances or clones, anything that can batched, spawned, moved or destroyed – in particular moved (object re-use for radius and frustum populating).

Thinking of all objects in your level as entities that can be updated in fast, bulk operations, mostly time-sliced in other threads – with only any movement updates done in the game thread can help with an over-all idea of where optimization is needed. Keeping your distance entities as fast, no physics, no collision objects provides great speed ups.

Different types of rdProxies

There are various types of proxies provided by rdInst – all are scanned and processed within the same loops, the Short Distance proxies by default also use a sphere trace to find objects at close distance – this isn’t optimal (but still not slow), it can be turned to only scan from baked entity data which doesn’t need any collision enabled and is fully threaded.

You can also find more information on these in the manuals.

What can the rdProxies be?

rdProxies (the ‘Live Actor’ the entity gets swapped to when close) can be one or more of the following:

  • Actor (based on a class)
  • DataLayer (based on a soft path)
  • StaticMesh Instance (based on a soft path)

How to use rdProxies

rdInst 1.50 provides a number of ways to add rdProxies to entities – you can:

  • Use the rdSpawnActor/rdProceduralActor, they have options for all types of proxies in their spawn properties – the rdSpawnActor also uses the proxy settings (see below) when creating rdSpawnActors from actors in your level.
  • Use the ProceduralActor Placement DataAssets to save the settings in.
  • Use Blueprint or C++ functions to add/edit/remove them at any point.
  • Use the “Proxy Settings” tool (right-click on an actor in the level or asset in the content browser)
    These can be used for:
    • Auto-Instancing, rdInst will set up proxies for any applicable actors at BeginPlay from these settings.
    • Prefabs, rdBPtools passes these settings to the prefab creation which builds them into rdInst prefabs.
    • Spawn Actors from “Create SpawnActor from Selection”.

rdSpawnActor Proxies

The rdProceduralActor can be used populate your levels from collections of assets (more information can be found here) – along with distribution and randomization options, you also get options to specify rdProxies for the objects.

Once you’ve dragged in a BakedData asset, Meshes, Placement DataAssets or Niagara fx into one of the options in the green box you can expand the SpawnData section to navigate around each objects properties.

To find out more about the rdProceduralActor, take a look at this tutorial.

You can also store your proxy settings in the Placement DataAssets that the rdProceduralActor can use – these are pre-defined collections of assets to spawn with many options, including proxy settings.

Proxy Settings tool

The Proxy Settings tool opens a window from which you can specify the type of proxy and its properties you want.

Either right-click on actor/s in the level, or asset/s in the content browser and choose the “Proxy Settings…” option from the rdInst submenu.

When setting the properties on the Assets in the Content Browser, they’re used as the defaults for when-ever the mesh is used in the level – when setting them on the Actors, just those instances are affected (except for All-Instances mode).

If you set the “All-Instances” mode on multiple instances of an entity to different Proxy Settings, your guess is as good as mine as to which one will take effect.

This will now open the Settings Window, from which you can choose the type of proxy you want – this will reveal its settings below from which you can edit. You’ll notice some options get greyed out for certain modes – this just means they’re not used for that proxy type.

The simplest type of proxy is the ShortDistance Proxy which swaps to an Actor in proximity, here’s an example of setting one up for a simple pickup, it uses the All Instances mode, so all instances (rdInst ISMs or HISMs) of the mesh asset or StaticMeshActors source mesh are included – it pools the Pickup BP Actor to speed up spawning and it doesn’t hide the mesh when the proxy is swapped in. This only needs to be set on the asset, or one of the StaticMeshActors using the mesh in the level (doesn’t matter if you set it on more).

This example creates a Short Distance Proxy in All Instance mode, swapping to another mesh with collision enabled in proximity. It also adds a destruction Proxy which is used when the proxy is destroyed, swapping to the “Destroyed Mesh”.

This example creates a LongDistance Proxy, swapping to the Vehicle when within the LongScan Distance.

This example turns all instances of the mesh into a powerful PickUp with highlighting, interaction and respawning.