I’m banging my head against the wall here for two days straight (on a deadline… supposedly). I’ve got a basic float test using the Water plugin with a WaterBodyOcean + Buoyancy component in UE 5.3.2 (running on macOS 14.4.1, M2 Max MacBook Pro with 96GB RAM). The Buoyancy actor is placed above the water, drops down, and just… keeps sinking. No debug draw, no forces, no splash — nothing.
Here’s what I’ve tried so far:
• Made sure WaterBodyOcean is within a WaterZone
• Landscape collision is set to WaterBodyCollision preset (which was missing – got the preset from the forum)
• That profile uses QueryOnly collision (as expected) – tried setting to Collision Enabled
• Buoyancy component has Auto Activate checked
• Enabled all buoyancy debug modes (showdebug buoyancy, pxvis buoys, etc.) — no output or visuals
• No errors, no warnings, no logs suggesting anything’s wrong
• Tried reparenting the BP to FloatingPawn and Actor — same result
• Confirmed my Buoyancy sample points are in the water and not too deep
• Even tried spawning the actor under the waterline to see if it’d pop up — nope
• Physics is enabled, simulation is on, mass is normal
• Also made sure collision channels overlap water-relevant types (WorldDynamic, PhysicsBody, etc.)
• Everything from project settings to component settings has been double-checked
• Built fresh in an empty project just to rule out some corruption or weird override
• Brush_0 does not have BrushBodySetup appears in the log, though I’m not using BSP here — might be a red herring?
• All buoyancy visualization commands run fine but don’t display anything
Here’s the project zipped and uploaded for anyone willing to take a peek:
I’ve seen other people running into similar issues but never got a solid fix. At this point I just want to know if:
• I’m missing something dumb
• Something is broken in Mac builds
• Or if the Water plugin’s Buoyancy component is just that flaky
Let me know if you need a screen recording or deeper system trace. I’ve got logs, screenshots, and a working debugger on it. Just can’t figure out why the actor sinks like a brick and doesn’t even register in debug.