The first screen shot shows the Sockets attachment options in the Blueprint Details Panel of a static mesh in an actor. As you can see, the only option is the Parent Socket name.
The problem with this is that you cannot control whether the attachment is relative or absolute, which can result in wild behaviour, such as when the scale of the parent and child do not match for example. To create a proper attachment you need to use the AttachToComponent node in the Construction Script like this.
This allows setting the Location, Rotation and Scale Rule, which is what is missing from the Sockets options in the static mesh’s Details Panel in the actor’s Blueprint.
Please consider adding these options into the Sockets attachment options to make setting up attachments quicker and easier without having to rely on the Construction Script.
Attachment via the component hierarchy tree is always going to be relative to the parent (or socket location), and it’s WYSIWYG in the viewport preview. The other settings in the AttachToComponent node end up computing a relative transform under the hood and are only about taking a component that was already existing and attaching it, possibly preserving some of the current transform information, rather than creating a component in the tree as it is instantiated.
Cheers,
Michael Noland
OK, thanks for the reply. WYSIWYG works fine when skeleton, socket and mesh are all scaled to 1.0. Unfortunately the reality is that many models aren’t scaled right for UE4, so when you scale them in the importer you end up with very funny results when trying to attach them together in a blueprint. Only while I’ve found is to do it in the construction script with the scale set to absolute. Ideally one would go and rescale the models in a modelling program before importing, but that isn’t always an option, especially with skeletal meshes as it usually ends up messing up the animations.
