Selecting Actors

Selecting Actors, while simple in nature, is an important part of the level-editing process. The ability to quickly and easily select the Actors that you want to work with enhances productivity and speeds up the design process.

This page details the different ways to select Actors in Unreal Engine.

Simple Selection

The most basic method of selecting Actors is to left-click them in the Viewport. Clicking an Actor will deselect any currently selected Actors and select the new one instead. If you hold down the Ctrl key while you click a new (unselected) Actor, the new Actor is added to the selection. If you hold down the Ctrl key while clicking a selected Actor, the Actor is removed from the selection.

This method is good for selecting small numbers of Actors or several isolated Actors spread out across a Level, but it can be slow and tedious for selecting large numbers of Actors.

Selected Actors are highlighted in the Viewport. In this example, the table is selected, as shown by the yellow highlight and the presence of the Transform widget.

When you select multiple Actors, you can transform them as a group, and you can modify their properties simultaneously in the Details panel.

When you have two or more Actors selected, you can add them to a group to make it easier to re-select them or change their properties at the same time. For more information, refer to the Grouping Actors page.

Selecting Actors in the World Outliner

The World Outliner is a panel in the Unreal Editor that contains a hierarchical tree view of all Actors in the level. By default, it is located at the right-hand side of the Unreal Editor window.

You can select and deselect individual Actors in the list the same way you would in the Viewport.

In addition, you can select multiple Actors in the following ways:

• Click an Actor, then hold down the Shift key and click another Actor to select all the Actors between them in the list.

  

• Hold down the Ctrl key and click multiple Actors to select all of them. The Actors don't have to be in sequence.

  

Selecting any Actor in the World Outliner also selects it in the viewport, and vice versa.

Marquee Selection (Click-And-Drag)

Marquee selection is a quick way to select or deselect a group of Actors within a certain area in the viewport. This type of selection is performed by clicking and dragging the mouse, while optionally holding down a key or key combination. All the Actors within the box will be selected or deselected depending on the combination of keys and mouse button you hold down while dragging the mouse.

Marquee selection in Unreal Editor. Note that this viewport is in orthographic top-down view, which makes it easier to select multiple objects using click-and-drag.

The following table shows the possible keyboard combinations for marquee selection.

Using the Select Menu

The Select menu in the Unreal Editor's menu bar brings up some advanced selection techniques.

The options available in this submenu vary depending on the type of Actor you select. For example, if you have a Static Mesh selected, you will see different options than if you have a Blueprint selected.

The table below details some of the common options found within the Select submenu.