rdInst Tutorial 7.1 – The Spawn Actor

Last Updated: 23rd April 2025
Tutorial created using rdInst version 1.50

The rdSpawnActor is a versatile and efficient way to store and spawn objects.

It can be used like a streamed level, only loading and spawning either at a distance or programmatically – and unloaded when not needed.

There are many more features that make it extremely useful:

  • Very lightweight, disk footprint is extremely small, memory footprint is tight, scanning is threaded and tight.
  • Object types within the SpawnActor can each have their own stream distance, breaking up the loading into smaller chunks.
  • Objects are re-used where possible from older, hidden objects.
  • Object spawning can be distributed among multiple frames.
  • SpawnActors can be used any number of times in a level.
  • High-speed instances and prefabs can be Proxied (swapped to live actors when close)
  • Objects can be spawned only in the viewer area, either radius based or frustum based.

You can create SpawnActors in various ways:

  • Drag a SpawnActor Baked DataAsset into the level
  • Use the “Add Actor” menu or panel
  • Spawn from the rdSpawnActor class
  • Use the “Create SpawnActor from Selection” tool
  • Use the “Convert Level to SpawnActor” tool

The following tutorials go through techniques to create and use rdSpawnActors.