Animating spline mesh component with spline

So after seeing the swinging lanterns in the blueprints examples scene, I decided to try to make my own slightly more complicated version, and have run into a few issues I am unsure of how to fix, so I figured I would ask.

I was able to replicate the swinging motion and even placement of the lanterns, and I was able to add a spline mesh component along the spline to give the illusion that these lanterns are hanging on a wire. The spline still operates as intended, and for the most part the lanterns behave correctly (more on that later).

However where I have hit a snag is in the animation portion. The lanterns animate just fine, however I cannot get the wire to animate for the life of me. The closest I got was getting the wire to move, but it was instantiating a new mesh every frame, which of course was not what I wanted. This I accomplished by switching the order of the swaying animation comment box, and the create wire comment box.

My question: What am I missing/doing wrong? I believe this is possible, as I’ve seen much more advanced things done with splines, so the question really is what little thing am I doing wrong?

My blueprint:


It’s current results:

With swaying animation before create wire:

Bonus question:

In the blueprints example the lanterns have a slight rotation to them as well, which gives a nice effect, however the moment you rotate them, they fall apart due to the way the math is being done. Does anyone know how to keep that rotation working, while simultaneously allowing you to rotate/angle the blueprint in the world?

Hey there!

I seem to have fixed this problem. What I did was place the swaying animation before the wire creation, like you did before. But to fix the duplication, I add all the spline mesh components that are made for the wire to an array and then at the begin of every loop (that exists because of the animation) I delete all the spline mesh components in that array. So instead of editing the wire, it reconstructs it.

I hope this helps!

P.S: It’s a bit heavy on performance though, not sure yet how to fix that.