Section 2.2: The World Context Menu and Outliner Menu
When you have Static Mesh actors selected in your level and you Right-Click – a Context menu item is added by rdMeshTools with a submenu of tools.
The first tool changes the pivot points of the Static Meshes used by the selected actors in the same way as Section 2.1 did, but it also Updates all the Selected Actors positions to correct for the change in pivot locations. This also works for instances in selected prefabs.
The next tool is very handy to easily solve the problems with instances and negatively scaled transforms.
Instanced Static Meshes don’t easily support negative scales – no matter what you do it involves another set of draw calls from a new ISM Component. To cater for that in a singleton instance manager – it would require extra code in tight loops to locate instance components from passed in meshes. A better solution is to create new StaticMeshes which are mirrored in the dimensions that are negative – meshes are usually very light-weight (see rdLODtools for optimizing larger ones). These are then just referenced in the quick mesh lookup system.
This tool scans through the selected actors, filtering to StaticMesh actors that have negative scales. It then creates new StaticMesh assets Mirrored in the negative dimensions and updates the actors in the level to have corrected scale values and reference the newly created meshes.
The tool scans for existing meshes already mirrored and uses them when available.
The next tool is similar to the previous one – but scans through the selected actors finding meshes that have non-default materials assigned to them.
When creating Instanced Static Meshes, only one set of materials can be used by each ISM Component. Usually the default materials from the asset are assigned when using singleton instance mangers.
The new meshes are stored in the same folders as the existing ones. The tool scans for meshes already saved using the specific materials and uses them when available.
The Rename Actors tool can be useful to quickly give your level actors descriptive names. It opens a window from where you can specify a base name, or use any source StaticMesh’s name in a simplified form.
You can enter a base name in the Name field – if you have “Use StaticMesh Name” unticked, or the selected Actor is not mesh based, this is what will be used (suffixed with a count).
If the selected Actor is a mesh and you have “Use StaticMesh Name” ticked – the name of the mesh will be used (suffixed with a count).
If “Simplify StaticMesh Name” is ticked, the name of the mesh is simplified (prefixes apart from SM_ and suffixes are removed).
The Refine Selection tool is used to customize the current selection with criteria selected from the submenu.
