I am fairly new to Unreal Engine, and I wanted to try to build a box character, but I wanted to specifically make it possible to be modular, in case I wanted to allow players to have different sizes. So my solution was building static mesh panels for the box in combination with skeletal mesh hinges to connect everything through sockets. I get the feeling that with my current setup, I am doing things the long way around.
Another problem I also see in the future of making this modular is the box collision being the root. I am only doing that because every time I tried to use the collision on the box panels, the panels would fall off their sockets.
Are there any tips anyone would be willing to give me?
Thank you, I still consider myself pretty new at this so I appreciate the support!
The only reason I am making them modular pieces is that if I just scale them, then it will begin to squash and stretch the edges of the cardboard, making them thicker or skinnier than they should be normally.
And I just tested your idea with the Component Details, and thank you so much! It was not populating all the sockets when I first made it, so I thought that would not work, but now that I have my hierarchy properly set up, I can see all the sockets I need!
About the edge preservation when scaling:
IDK - it seems like a lot of engineering for a pretty minor visual issue. I would suggest you make the edges purely in texture using normal maps or make a few skeletal mesh models with different edges and swap them out after going above some ratio where you know your current model’s edges get noticeably distorted. You can surely handle some small amount of non-uniform scaling without the edges being noticeably distorted.
Anyways, that’s not important. Keep up the good work
I really like what you did!