Collisions in Zero G game are making friends ill, Char Stops jarringly instead of gliding naturally!

Development World Creation
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I am working on a Lone Echo type game (Similar Zero-G mechanics, not story or style! No robots :wink: I don’t plan to add brakes, as the person can use their thrusters to ‘slow down or reverse’ and can stop by grabbing part of the apparently abandoned Alien space station (oops I’ve said too much) BUT: when you just brush up against a wall (without grabbing and holding on, especially at a glancing angle, I would like the character to ‘slide’ or glide along the wall with medium to low friction. Instead, the character stops instantly upon actor overlap… it’s very jarring and making me worry I’ve wasted months of development time. I am hoping someone can help me here, I will link to any answer at Unreal Answers as people there have responded to my queries to say they too have not found a solution for this. Part of the trouble I am having is the character is dynamically generated, and the person who generously offered the demo-project is no longer answering questions (though I do plane to give him an ‘Locomotion Mechanics’. (hopefully I can figure out his last name if I cannot reach him by release…) I am happy to extend credit to someone with a solution as well. While I am very new to UNREAL, I been in the industry for 25 years, working at Warner Bros. Activision, Praxis Filmworks etc. I only share that so you know, credit in the game won’t be a nothing burger. When I release I have connections to do serious marketing and get the word out. Maybe even get ‘Caleb’ from Reality Check VR (my favorite channel and a good online friend) to live demo it! ;~)

Here is the simplified scene with the blueprints in question, I just want to stop the stopping (glide instead)

Also, I am planing to try to learn as much about blueprint as I can on my own. They are not like anything I have ever learned, I can usually click on everything look at variables, figure out what they do and reverse engineer a good understanding very quickly. With blueprint, when I click and look, the nodes seem to have no (or very little) information, so trying to understand them from the outside in, feels completely impossible, I guess one could say: ‘no way to get there from here’. I can see WHAT they do, but can’t get to the point of understanding why or how… SO: Can someone suggest what might be the best Advanced Tutorial Series to really learn Blueprints and what all the variables mean and do?? Out there I see there are places like:

Digital Tutors,
3D Motive,
Udemy,
Pluralsight,
Lynda

They all have advanced blueprint courses, I understand the basics of hierarchical nodes and connections, I used to work in Digital Fusion in the 90’s on an animated TV show. I know Blueprint is exponentially more complex though, in terms of amount of choices and nearly infinite possibilities… I just wonder if there is a well known outstanding Blueprint tutorial series, for actual mastery…

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME!

Rob

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Nothing? What happened to: “Come here to learn Unreal Engine in a supportive online community!” … Ironically, Unreal Answers suggested I try here. People are so much less today in every way. When we were INVENTING Computer Graphics in the late 80’s and early’ 90, using tools like 3D Studio for DOS and TOPAS, we had an amazing, community that was like a family. No industry harming hoarding of techniques like today. After all, We didn’t want the same three games being made over and over until there are thousands of the same 3 games. LIKE TODAY ;~)

I’ll learn it anyways! See you at E3, (from the other side of our booth) HA!

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​​​​​​​This isn’t really the right section for that questions.

Regardless the engine character uses a manual wall slide function to calculate the transition, you are likely using a straight sweeping movement which will just stop on contact.

You can convert to a manual setup like the engine character or run off of physics instead.

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Hi, thanks,. Maybe you could tell me, what IS the right section? ;") I have been to Answers, posted, they told me to come here, (after I finally found it ) now apparently I’m still not in the right place,. It starts to seem like silly semantics to be honest, this Unreal board, that Unreal forum, if Unreal people are the type to help each other, one would assume,… given the chance… . they would! Not coninually send people elsewhere,. I mean, if Unreal Answers isn’t the place to ask Unreal Questions, and Developnent/Content Creation isn’t the place to ask about Developing Content Creation, maybe it’s not me, maybe it’s a systemic problem or like I said above, this generation, Just Doesn’t Care About Anyone, Even Themselves. Meaning: Care enough to help themselves by helping others and indirectly their own INDUSTRY. (The more, better and VARIED games out there, the healthier the industry)!

Sorry, i’m being led on a merry chase at this point, cat’s tail,… etc. I’m getting really discouraged… Could you please maybe give a liittle more than that one line? I know I need physics, I have even found where the Sweep is enabled and then setting zero velocity, but don’t know enough yet to fix this one problem.
( I’m a character Animator for 25 years,. :wink: If I get over this one hump, I can have a game on the market while I continue to learn. I have offered credit in the game, profit participation, $30,000 in media production assets, Custom Character or Music, Since you seem to know, is there anything I can do to get you to really help with the actual pawn blueprint etc? Do you need a custom character? An orchestral score? The Evermotion 3D Library? Kontakt Sound libraries. 6,000 Motion capture files,?

thanks, Woody.

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Here a couple of tutorials I’ve found helpful.

Channel: unrealgaimedev (he doesn’t really explain stuff very well, but if your already familiar with programming then just watching how he organizes his content to be flexible and modular will be helpful)

This is an particularly good unreal livestream covering blueprints. Really anything you can find with Zak Parish teaching will be great.

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Do you want the pawn to just slow down. Or are you wanting it to kinda pull towards the wall like the wall has gravity when you’re near it? Or do you just want to bounce off the wall and lose some momentum?

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Those tutorials sound great, Sounds like the more casual type session I ‘understand’ more and retain better then the Yawn’y rote memory stuff ;")

I would be happy if the character just bounced off a bit. Just like the balls in the scene (One can grab on to the wall if they want, and not bounce after all! ;), So that it is like the balls standard physics actually, Nayve a luttle less, extreme, or, weighted like a body weight I guess. So the if you brush aginst the wall at a slight angle, you’d sorta continue to slide on the wall, and at 90° etc, you’d bounce back,. I got exactly that, just by adding 10 (replacing the zeros) in the x y z of SetPhysics Linear,… something,. (Or I may have changed the Set Physics to Add impulse or Add force, at that point, A big problem is. I don’t know whether to add to the main pawn actor group, or the Pawn, or the Physics Root or Actor or Camera or Collision object (all those pawn hierarchy things in the upper left panel, when you edit the MotionControllerPawn BP…) They all have settings, none are set to Physics or Collisions, stuff like that makes it so much harder, I am suspecting, that like in 3D Studio / 3ds Max, ‘there’s a hundred ways to do any given thing’, and I have to just keep getting familiar and not getting frustrated, it’s an emergent process and one day, I will realize, ‘i’m there, I know my tool…’ I just hope I can get this one thing out there to help set the ball rolling,. While I continue. THANKS FOR THE REPLY!

edit: that Fortnite Tutorial seems really good for general understanding, and in 4.19.1 Very recent… I will do that one for sure, more of a long term thing, but looks very good. Maybe I’ll do a Fortnite like game next LOL ;“) I really wanted my first thing out there to allow you to just be weightless in the environjent without gravity etc… Other than the dead stop head/body collisions…, I’m really happy with this Zero G method,. I’ll need to learn how to add procedural hand grabs etc, and add a body, and 3rd person option (Every VR game should have 3rd person POV option!) but cosmetics like that can be an update! ;”)

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I toyed around with procedural grabbing a while back, the method I used was to add a spline to each finger then have the ik follow along the spline. that way you can tweek it pretty easily. I couldn’t figure out how to get the finger tips to turn to be flush with the thing it’s grabbing though so I put that on the back burner.

There is a lone echo gdc slideshow that goes over how they did their hands and arms, it might be helpful when you start working on that.

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The Zak Parrish one is spectacular, he’s light and funny, It is GREAT to see someone build BP in front if me like that,. I always wondered how to tell it what too pay attention ‘reference’ to, ABDCthis whole don’t cast too high don’t cast too low thing is directly relevant to my trying to understand what in the Pawn Motion Controller hierarchy I see in the BP editor I should try to apply physics to, which I believe is the Physics Root or Character,. Or Collision, Oops I lost it again,… LOL Well not Camera I know that! I think… Anyways, this gives me skne hooe I may have a chance to understand this, I was thinking of fibding a community college U real Blueprint ckass, any idea what ekse is out there? Any LYNDA ones that are good? I’m actually consideting making a VR CLASS ROOM of NOTES and Categories and use that ‘physical’ space, to try to layout and understand it all visually, With ‘Data Spaghetti’ reaching out to the actual objects and data nodes can be overhead showing the equivalence, overlay cirresponding Zak quotes LOL! (Then maybe release whatever I come up with for free to help…)

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I’ve never used lynda. There’s a udemy class I got about half way through that was pretty good, “The Unreal Engine Developer Course”. It leans much more on using c++ rather than blueprints though.
If you lookup ‘vr cookbook’ there is a github link with several small blueprint vr example projects.

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In about an hour, I quickly got overwhelmed in the Zak one,. I wish I had learned Unreal 25 years ago instead of 3ds Max, I am just too old now. If I coluld ask questions that come up some place, i would be fine, but it can take months just to get an answer of how to get a character to bounce off a wall, at the forums. That is a non sequiter,. I appreciate your trying, bht help here seens kinda rare,. Any idea where there is any sort of PAY help service where one can ask simple questions and get a simple answer reasonably fast? I hate this discouragement feeling I just want to do my work! ;") thnx!

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I FOUND THIS! Is like $40 on Amazon! Has 188 pages, I’m old I like to read first, then do tutorials when I finally ‘get it’ ;“) This looks good! ;”) I learned most everything even Boujou, 3ds Max and Character Studio, etc
Share to you: https://github.com/hayderimran7/free-tech-ebooks-from-packtpub/blob/master/Blueprints%20Visual%20Scripting%20for%20Unreal%20Engine/9781785286018-BLUEPRINTS_VISUAL_SCRIPTING_FOR_UNREAL_ENGINE.pdf

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well there’s the job forum https://forums.unrealengine.com/comm…ing-for-talent

yeah the book seems like it’s laid out clearly.

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For the game i’m building I’m using the vr expansion plugin, which has a vr movement component. It’s a ridiculously complex system so there is a learning curve, but if you wanted to switch over it does bounce off walls when you’re using the either the low grav or the flying mode.
It’s kinda still disorienting though.

Just a theory, but it might feel better to just slow the character down to some max speed limit as they approach a wall. you could run a capsule trace along the players velocity to see if it’s going to hit something, then get the length of the vector(distance from wall) and lerp into the max speed based on that.

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I am an Artist,. I’ll be looking to partner with a BP guy, because that sounds like Greek and looks like Heiroglyphics to me! Lerp? LOL… I can’t believe I ever enjoyed this work… (When I’m bringing characters to life,…)

thnx…

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Hi I tried that, I couldn’t even get the template character to move much less bounce, I am really glad UNITY is stepping up the graphics game even with C# it was 10,000,000,000 times more logical and intuitive than UNREAL, How can UNREAL have evolved NO USER FRIENDLY Options in all these years? BP is like a Spaghetti nightmare,. Reminds me of DIGITAL FUSION 20 ago,… and this " ““community”” ",. You get one cryptic clue then the person dissapears,… When I help a young character animator I commit, not add to the confusion, then disappear on them… .

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Hello, I just saw your reply, THANKS! You asked about the kind of ‘bounce’ I wanted :slight_smile: I literally just want to simply bounce away from the wall (continuing in the same general direction of travel, etc like a normal bounce) and lose a little momentum, (Ideally without spinning of course :slight_smile: Truly as simple as could be,. Doesn’t even require physics I don’t think, because I got this clue from ‘MightyEnigma’!:
.
“Why not just set velocity to the direction the character is facing, or perhaps the impact normal between that and the wall they’re pushing on, and multiply by a number that represents the strength of the push?”

That sounds perfect!! BUT it might as well be ancient Greek or Hieroglyphics as vague as it is, (To an Artistic Type like me, I am an Animator! :slight_smile: … :frowning: If someone could just add the magic blueprint command nodes into my BP and let me learn from it that way. it would be so helpful and appreciated, it would save an entire elaborate VR game (about to be shelved)

If you know how to make a simple bounce of any kind, PLEASE HELP ME!! Here is my Blueprint and a simple working map:
lnik: https://www.sendspace.com/file/9d5tj5

I can get a simple bounce just adding 10 10 10 to the x y z of the ‘Set Physics Linear Velocity’, BUT it is usually makes you bounce in the WRONG DIRECTION, You 1/4 of the time,. bounce back the way you came or off to the left LOL :slight_smile: !!

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I made some impact effects awhile back where I had the sparks flying off based on the angle it hit the wall. I can’t quite remember if I had to make any significant edits, but think I just copied the code from this post.

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/129907/reflection-vector-1.html

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Oh wow, I’m gonna have to play around with that formula myself a bit, to see if I can get some kind of reflection/bounce to work in my zero-g project… Tho I think the problem I was always running into, was that I couldn’t apply forces to the player quite right the way I was doing things, but that was several UE4 versions ago, so maybe I can get it working now, especially with a better formula, I’m sure I just wasn’t using the right numbers or functions at the time. hmm

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Right, so to get the correct direction, you multiply in the impact normal and use that instead of a flat 10, 10, 10.