deform along spline - how to make a shark swim animation

Hello,

i am trying to make a object move along a spline while being deformed by it.
like a shark swiming
or let it be a flying worm or something like that…

i found how to make a spline and a spline mesh…
and i suspect that a “event beginplay” could be a triger to start the thing happening…

but after that i am currently still overhelmed, and it would be a great help if anybody could give me a hand on this.

i have no idea which nodes i have to put together… how to set the speed… and if i would like to make it loop…

looking forward to any kind of help.

thankyou very much and greetings!!
white

ps: like this,… but in unreal editor

pathdeform.gif

ps: yes, im a total beginner… after doing the first imports of objects and making my first materials to arange the first couple of scenes, i guess i now need to start understanding blueprints.
im handy with all kinds of programs and 3d apps and do all that for quite a while now,… but UE is all new, and i have no real practical scripting experience

It’s probably easier to create a Blendspace Animation which contains 3 Animations. 1 Turn Left animation, 1 Turn Right animation and 1 Forward animation. Then you take the direction / acceleration vector and plug that into the Blendspace. When the acceleration / right vector is -1, then turn fully left and when it is 1 then turn fully right. Any direction in between -1 and 1 will be blended properly and smoothly.

thanks for the reply wabo!

the blendspace thing looks very usefull and important. it appears to be the fundamental animation setup in ue.

but for my case it does not seem to be the right thing, i guess.
its not obvious in the gif, but the path i need is not a simple repeating s-curve.

do you say its realy difficult to set up a mesh moving along a path ?

Oh no, moving a mesh along a spline is actually very easy. Just follow this tutorial;

If this doesn’t suit your needs, then use these keywords to google until you find something that works for you. ‘‘unreal engine follow mesh along spline’’. Best of luck :).