overlap_scene
Query sphere, box, or capsule overlaps in an Unreal world to find actors and components inside a volume, returning JSON for proximity checks like water containment or blocked build spots.
Instructions
Sphere / box / capsule overlap query against the world: "what is inside this volume?", returning one JSON entry per overlapping actor+component instead of export-text, so no Python is needed to parse it. Use it over raycast_scene when the question is proximity/containment rather than line of sight -- e.g. is the pawn actually inside a water body's real collision, is anything blocking a build spot. Accepts the same world selector (editor / server / client / pie:N): an editor-world query does NOT see World-Partition/OFPA actor collision, so pass a live PIE world, and in co-op say WHICH one or an empty result is uninterpretable.
Returns: { overlaps: [{actor_path, actor_name, component_name, item_index, blocking}], count: int, world: string, world_name: string|null, world_package: string|null, world_type: string|null, net_mode: string|null, pie_instance: number }
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| shape | Yes | "sphere" | "box" | "capsule" | |
| world | No | Which world to query: absent/"editor" (default) | "server" (the PIE world with authority) | "client" | "pie:N" | "pie" (ambiguous) | "game" (alias of "pie"). Pass a live world to hit World-Partition/OFPA actor collision (only cooked in the PIE physics scene). | |
| radius | Yes | Sphere/capsule radius (required for those shapes) | |
| location | Yes | World-space [x, y, z] shape center | |
| half_extent | No | Box HALF-extent [x, y, z], not the full size (required for box) | |
| half_height | Yes | Capsule half-height (required for capsule) | |
| ignore_actors | No | Actor names/labels to exclude from the overlap. | |
| trace_channel | No | Collision channel, canonical ("ECC_Visibility") or friendly ("Visibility"). Defaults to "Visibility". |