Chaos Modular Vehicle Please Epic Give Us some Light!

[than_sad]

Hi. This is my first post, then sorry if I made any mistake. I checked the guideline already…

I’m going to develop a game that will simulate a GT car driving and collisions as much realistic as possible. That’s why I choose to start using Chaos Modular Vehicle and after days of pure frustration and faced all the possible problems, wheels falling down after pawn, wheels rotating in the wrong direction, vehicle going in circles instead of forward, etc.

But finally I get this, and I think is a good starting point.

Chaos Modular Vehicle Physiscs

After this, a lot of questions comes to me and I feel absolutely alone with that. I know It’s a Experimental plugin, but the kick start guide is short, fast and useless in my case because I need to do my own car not use one from another game. I tried to replicate all, to my car but finally can’t solve the absence of bones in my Physics Asset… Online I just found 4 videos (2 about not modular) and one post asking for get velocity in this comunity, that’s all in all the internet

But trying to replicate the sports car, I realized that in quick start guide and in the example sports car, you used a skeletal mesh as a full car linked to his animation blueprint (Hiding the parts in the Cluster Union Vehicle Component, only accessible (at least for my) the full body of the car without wheels (I can’t locate the wheel of the example sports car)

Finally I had no choice than made it without animation blueprint, skeletal mesh, and physics assets. What’s the difference between made it in the Cluster Union Vehicle Component only or calling a mesh with an animation blueprint, skeleton, etc.?

I’m also facing a strange problem, my car as see in the video have correct general behavior but going straight the car slides to the side like I’m drifting. You can see it here, I’m just pressing W key.

Chaos Modular Vehicle Fordward Problem

I also wants to animate the suspension. Should I made it as a skeletal mesh with the bones, also the physics asset for collisions and call it from the animation section in the mesh in Cluster Union Vehicle Component?

Also the speed, RPM, gear, etc. I have no idea how to get this values and show it on UI I just found about Get Physics Linear Velocity and give me data but don’t know how to use it…

I’m sorry for the long message, but it’s my only chance to get support from source. All I achieved in the last 4 days, now knowing how to do it, I can reproduce it in less than one hour… Go blind is really frustrating, and make the experience of work with unreal, the opposite of how powerful you feel, when you know what you do…

Anyway, thanks for your time, and if anyone want to participate giving what learned by themselves or whatever will be really welcoming.

Best Regards and sorry for my English,

Than.

[than_sad]

Hi, after two months of my post, I’m sorry to say it, but I havent had any help from anyone, I just found ONE person who made a car with Chaos Modular Vehicle plugin. And the AI Assistant… no coment, try and see by yourself.

I found big limitations using Chaos Modular Vehicle in this two months. But I’m regularly checking the UE5 main branch in github and I saw changes every week. I hoppe that measn you (epic) are working on it.

After get a working setup with CMV (shown in the first post) I started to try the Chaos destruction, to break parts of the car (My Cluster Union Vehicle Component, have 30 car parts). But after get nice initial results, the jitter and camera delays makes the gameplay horrible. You can see here:

The problem came when I added the skeletal mesh to the cluster to handle the animation. Camera lags and jitters dissapears but now when a part gets broken just get frozen. I saw in the CMV exaple vehicles the sports car (the only one with the skeletal mesh attached to it) have disabled the break bolean and also the break threshold are higher than usual.

After hours of tests with the AI (Really sad to say, the google one) we think when you add the skeletal mesh and call the blueprint, that animation blueprint handles the animation (just the wheels in this case) but in paralel the Cluster Union Vehicle Component is calculating the phisycs (I know because wheen the car glass brokes I have a noticeable FPS drop).

When a parts got broken, the animation blueprint don’t call back the Cluster Union Vehicle Component to show the physics of fall away from car. Probably I’m wrong and it’s just because I don’t know how to do it… Who knows…

Another big problem is the RPM of the CMV, I was hours and hours with the AI analizing the source code, the functions, creating a C ++ class to simulate calls to RPM. Conclusion, there is no RPM in CMV. No RPM, no car sound, so I decided to simuylate it but, angular velocity in CMV returns 0 always. Again maybe its just 5 minuts task, but who knows… Anyway I’m also not able to make the moto synth make more than white noise.

So I decided to go forward and try the Gameplay Cameras. Following for the second time the outdated quick start documentation, refearing to missing places, as always. This time I got a nice starting point but again with a big problem. Before with Spring arm I can activate the camera rotation lag and with the speed I can make the camera orbit the car in a really nice way, but I can’t make this to work in the same way with Gameplay Cameras, I think Lyra is the answer…

In this video you can see the bad camera orbit but also the transitions between cameras.

If there is anyone who read this post and know about the problems I described and can give me any tip, help, opinion, wathever it will be greatly apreciated. If it’s for say: You shouldn’t try experimental plugins more for advancved users than for someone who made just a 2 months unreal cours. Yes no needed, I know.

I share my experience becuase is what I missed to found here, someone who made something similar to mine and we can share and learn from each other, again sad to say I felt completely alone in the development of my first game in unreal engine. I hoppe all the explained can be useful for someone. Best regards!!