Cascading/sequencial traffic cone lights animation

[AdamDilley]

Hi All,

I’m hoping this post is in the right category, I feel like it’s relevant for a few of them.

I am trying to create an animated light sequence for traffic cones, similar to this:

PI-LIT® "SunFlower" Sequential Cone-Top Lamps

I’ve seen tutorials on how to make individual lights blink on/off and I saw this video with a method using an animated material:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRbPCmWZiOs&ab_channel=rileyb3d

But ideally I would like to achieve the effect using blueprints or a similar method, without needing to change the UVs of the traffic cones, to have them setup the same as the lights using the animated material.

I need to cover approximately 2km of road with these cones, so making separate animations and timings for the cones individually seems like overkill and very time consuming.

I was hoping to be able to use a spline and have the cones spawn along the spline then I can set the distance they are apart etc.

I would also like to have actual spot/point lights turn on/off as well as an emissive material for the cone light. However, if that over-complicates it, just having a strong emissive material turn on/off might be enough.

I’m not very good with blueprints, I’ve only created very basic ones in the past. Any help would be much appreciated. Or if there is a completely different approach/Unreal asset/plugin etc. that I should be using, please point me in the right direction.

Any help here would be amazing, thanks.

Adam

[ClockworkOcean]

The easiest way to do this is to make one BP cone, that does this

1 Turn light on
2 Wait
3 Turn light off
4 Pass to next cone

You just need a reference to the next cone, which you can set in the level

[AdamDilley]

Hi Clockwork,

Thank you for your response I really appreciate the help.

I’m having an issue getting it working, the part I’m struggling with is where you say:

@ClockworkOcean

You just need a reference to the next cone, which you can set in the level

I think I have the EventGraph set up the same as you have in your image:

But when I try and run it, I get this error:

Is that because I’m missing the reference to the next cone in the level, as you suggest? I don’t know how to do that part, if that’s the issue. Sorry if this is basic, I’m new to this side of Unreal.

Again, thanks for the help.

Adam

[ClockworkOcean]

Open the eye on the next cone ref

then you can see it ( and set it ) in the level

[AdamDilley]

Yes that did it!

Thank you, that is a much nicer solution to what I was planning to do and has saved me a lot of headache.