rdInst Tutorial 4.3 – Themed Prefabs
Last Updated: 29th April 2025
Tutorial created using rdInst version 1.50
One of the most powerful features of rdPrefabs is their ability to control what is being shown with “Themes”.
You can add themes to any object in a prefab, they will only show when you’ve added that/those themes to the Prefab (or parent Prefab). Each theme when entered is separated by a comma (,).
The objects are all stored as soft pointers, so only used objects are loaded during play.
You can leave these Prefabs As-Is in your game, they’re efficient, using shared instance manages, but there are also other options:
- Leave as-is.
- Convert them to SpawnActors once the level is laid out.
- Shift singleton instances of the prefabs into place when in proximity.
To build structured theme based Prefabs is straight forward, we’ll use an example of a dining room and how to build it up – basically, the work flow is:
- Build a “Chair” Prefab with a selection of modern, classical and worn chairs, each assigned that theme.
- Build a “Table” Prefab with the same types and themes.
- Build a “TableTop Scatter Prefab” with things like plates, cutlery, glasses, food etc – have various themed layouts like “banquet”, “take-out”, “empty” etc, ensure their positions are located above each of the different types of table top – if you want a combination of round and rectangular tables, set up different scatter layouts with a descriptive theme, like “roundtable,takeout” etc.
- Build a “Rug” Prefab with whatever possibilities of rugs you want.
- Build a “DiningArea” Prefab which contains a table, table scatter and chairs and rug.
- Build a “DiningRoom” Prefab which contains the DiningArea, Lights, Pictures, carpet/tiles, extra furniture etc.
It keeps going up from there, you Build House Prefabs and Building Prefabs built from Floors of Rooms and Hallways etc.
This tutorial will build a simple Generic Multi-Style Dining Room from rdPrefabs.