Often while making games in Unreal i’ll use the basic 3D primitive shapes(spheres,cubes,planes,cylinders,and cones) for prototyping levels. In Unreal Engine you can merge a set of actors into a new (reusable) static actor.

This is great for building levels and props without 3D modelling experience, or if you need a placeholder until the actual prop is ready.

To merge actors into a single static mesh, select a group of actors. Then right-click on them. There should be a menu option named “Convert Actors to Static Mesh“. Select that option, then choose the save location and name. After that, you can reuse the created static mesh as many times as you want.

One caveat is that the origin isn’t always where you want it to be, but that is a minor inconvenience for such useful fuctionality.

Example – A Simple Fence

Step 1, Drag a basic cube onto the scene.

Step 2, move & scale the cube. Then create duplicates, and move & scale them. You should end up with a fence made up of multiple Cube static mesh actors.

Step 3, select the cubes and right-click.

Step 4, select “Convert Actors to Static Mesh” and, select a save name and location.

Step 6, locate your new static mesh.

Step 7, drop it in the scene.
NOTE: The existing actors will still be in the scene after you create the static mesh, you can reuse them, or delete them once you have confirmed it’s creation.

And that’s it!

Why would i want to do this?

• It reduces the amount of actors in the world outliner.
• It allows you to easily build levels without 3d modelling experience.
• It’s fast & quick. Great for Game Jams and prototyping.

In my entry for the August 2019 Community Game Jam, i did this with the buildings. Each building probably consists of 10+ Cubes. I built out the building, merged the 10+ actors into a static mesh, and saved a lot of space in my world outliner.

Hope that helps.