Best setup for balloon physics of an AI character?

Development World Creation
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1

I am a relatively new UE4 dev. I do mostly art, so I warn you in advance that I’m on that intro level of scripting.

I’ve built a custom character. It’s a textured, rigged and animated balloon animal. I am trying to setup a Parent Class for the various different balloon characters I have, but I’ve been having a heck of a time getting their collision to work.

First of all here’s what I need to accomplish:

  1. the balloon animals need to float at slightly less than neutral density to the air (slow deflated balloon falling physics) - I set this up following this tutorial: UE4 How to make Helium Balloon Artificial or Anti Gravity using Physics in Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial - YouTube but the fact that I want to have an animated skeletal mesh is causing me problems

  2. I want the balloon characters to have collision similar to that of the results I got with just a static mesh, except where they may flex a little bit when colliding with other solid objects

So the problem I have is I want their overall bodies to float based more on their capsule component, be animated, but my custom collision gives me strange physics errors that are really difficult to nail down. I’ve followed the docs on:Troubleshooting Common Physics Asset Errors | Unreal Engine Documentation - However I’m not sure that I’ve set up the “low gravity” in the most logical way.

So mainly what I need to figure out is, what would be your advice of setting up a custom character that floats like a balloon, and has the flubbery collision a balloon would have? Any thoughts on the general approach would be awesome! Thanks!

2

Another way to think about this is having true zero or low gravity.

The main issue I’m facing is my joint weights are causing major disruption in the overall character movement. I want the body to float much like a real person would at zero gravity, IE rotation should not level out quickly if at all.

Any thoughts are welcome and appreciated!

3

Well… if anyone has interest after laboring over this I rebuilt my blueprint outside of the Character Class and just as an Actor. Since my characters were not humanoid in form it allowed me to create better collision and keep them emulating balloon like physics.