Best Practice: Refencing Nodes inside sub-scenes

[EscapeElement]

Godot Version

4.3

Question

hi folks.

I have a scene (a car) with another scene (car cosmetics) inside of it.
In the editor I’ve right clicked the sub scene and checked “make editable children”; So I’m able to drag nodes into the parent scene’s script to get a reference.

ex:
@onready var right_back_wheel: MeshInstance3D = $"CarMesh/wheel-back-right"

Now that I’m trying to make the car less prototype & more game ready, I want to be able to swap out the car cosmetics scene as needed.

What’s the best way to expose sub-scene elements to the parent script if it’s not “editable” or “local”?

• @export vars may help but such references are usually @onready … that hurts my brain.
• I thought perhaps unique names, but it doesn’t look like that would work.
• I suppose I could write functions to expose everything I want to do, but… ugh.
• Groups feel messy.

Looking for best practices… ‍

THANKS!

[gertkeno]

@EscapeElement

What’s the best way to expose sub-scene elements to the parent script if it’s not “editable” or “local”?

You can still access the sub-scene nodes through scripts without “editable children” enabled.

@EscapeElement

I thought perhaps unique names, but it doesn’t look like that would work.

You are correct, Unique names only work for the current scene

[EscapeElement]

@gertkeno

You can still access the sub-scene nodes through scripts without “editable children” enabled.

Thank you.