How do I get a reference to an actor that's already in the scene?

[keypekss]

I’m working on a tower defence kind of game. And I want enemies to move along a spline. So if I place an enemy and a spline into the scene, I can make that enemy move along that spline. Problem is that I have to select in the details panel of that enemy instance which spline to move along. Since there is going to be waves of enemies I need to spawn them during runtime. And if I spawn them during runtime I can’t select which spline to move along. Is there a way to set a default value for spline reference, or setting spline value in the details panel to a spline that is already in the scene during runtime.

[DanM]

You can use FindObject

FindObject<AMyActor>(GetWorld()->GetCurrentLevel(), TEXT("ActorName"));

Where ActorName is the name with the ID. You can get that by hovering over the actor in the world outliner.

There’s a third argument for whether or not to find exact class but I’m pretty sure it has a default argument so not required.

[keypekss]

That worked thank you! For future reference I’m writing how did I use that function.

I have 2 classes EnemyMinion and Path. There are also blueprints derived from these classes. EnemyMinion is character blueprint and Path is actor blueprint. I attached a SplineComponent to Path.
Now in EnemyMinion.h I added

UPROPERTY(BlueprintReadOnly)
USplineComponent* SplineComponent;
UPROPERTY(VisibleAnywhere)
APath* SplinePath;

And in EnemyMinion.cpp

//This line gets the spline actor
SplinePath = FindObject<APath>(GetWorld()->GetCurrentLevel(), TEXT("BP_Path_2"));

//This one gets the SplineComponent attached to that actor
	if (SplinePath != nullptr)
		SplineComponent = Cast<USplineComponent>(SplinePath->GetComponentByClass(USplineComponent::StaticClass()));

And finally in EnemyMinion blueprint I called SplineComponent variable and attached it to the node responsible for moving the enemy along the spline.