Attaching a Static Mesh Component to a Cable Component points

Development Programming & Scripting
1

Hello!

I’m trying to make a blueprint that attaches a flag static mesh to the vertices (or particles) of a cable, ultimately to look something like this: http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mNZfl4BuLAEOJGMiuwp8z2w.jpg

I made a reference image to help with my question. Using the “Get Cable Particle Locations” from a cable component doesn’t give an accurate location for the static meshes to be attached to. It pretty much draws a straight line from the first to the last vertex, then places the meshes (the red Xs on the diagram). However, the meshes need to be attached to the points AS the cable updates (refer to points 1,2,3 on diagram).

I looked around and found nothing. Has anyone come across this before? Any help would be appreciated.

Thank You!!
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2

Since cables are basically particle simulations, the particle locations will only update during play. So you need to do this in Event Graph (not Construction Script), and you need to hook up your SetWorldLocation node for the static mesh to Event Tick.

Allan Willard explains it in detail in this video: https://youtu.be/HNlYg2qY7cI?t=1365

(Yeah it’s been more than 3 years since the question, but I came across the same issue today and I figured it’s worth the answer since this comes up pretty high in search.)

3

Hey, that’s a great find but he only ends up attaching 1 mesh to the cable and I can’t seem to get it to apply a mesh at every point still (and have it follow the cable still) Any ideas how to do that?

4

It took me a while to get this working, but I figured it out. Here’s my solution:

First Create a new Blueprint actor and name it BP_CableMeshAttach
Open it up and create a function called SpawnMeshes

CableMeshes_SpawnMeshes
CableMeshes_SpawnMeshes2111×384 158 KB

Code to copy:

Then in your Event Graph on begin play call the SpawnMeshes function and on tick do this:

CableMeshes_EventGraph
CableMeshes_EventGraph1923×562 119 KB

Code to copy:

Now you can drag the blueprint actor into the scene and point it to a cable actor and it will automatically spawn a mesh for every other segment and attach it to the cable.

5

I also made a tutorial for those who want a step-by-step guide:

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