These are two tutorials in one here. First we’ll learn how to find the points that the navigation system will use to move your character from one location to another. Then we’ll use those points to display the trajectory. This technique can be applied to drawing any kind of spline of course, it could be a grenade’s predicted path or anything that needs displaying a spline.
Part 1
First of all we need to find the points that the navigation system uses to reach a destination. This is done easily by using the Blueprint function Find Path to Location Synchronously. It needs a Path Start, End, a Context and a Filter. The Context can be left alone if you’re calling the function from a Pawn or a Controller. Otherwise just plug in a valid reference to either of those. The Filter Class can be left alone.
In order to get the Path Start I simply use Get Actor Location. For the Path End I call Get Hit Result Under Cursor by Channel from the Player Controller, split the result struct and use Hit Result Location. From the Return Value we can call Get Path Points. That’s all, we’ll have all the points from start to end that the character will go through to get to its destination, sorted by order.
Part 2
As an overview of what we’ll be doing first we’ll turn those points into a spline. Then we’ll use that spline to create spline meshes.
But first we need a mesh. Make a small square plane. If you want a smoother spline you’ll have to subdivide it along the X axis. That’s because the X axis is the one that will get stretched by the spline.
Now that we have our mesh we’ll need a material for it. Make one and set it to Unlit and make sure Use With Spline Meshes is checked! Otherwise you’ll see the default gray material. Connect a glowing color to the Emissive input. Of course this is just a very basic material that barely gets the job done. You can make something a lot better for your own.
Next thing is creating the spline for the path. There’s a small gotcha here that you’ll have to understand before going further. The spline that drives the path, and the path itself are two different things. We’ll need one spline with multiple points and several spline meshes. Each spline mesh represents one segment of the whole spline. So, doing a little math you’ll see the number of segments we’re going to need equals the number of spline points minus 1.
To make the spline, follow this graph.
The reason why I’m setting the spline points to Curve Clamped is because I believe they look nicer that way.
Then we create each individual spline mesh. For more information on this method, check this out. I’m using the same method, except I’m creating both the spline and the components in the game instead of in the editor. Make sure the spline components are set to Movable and not Static.
As you can see, I’m storing both the spline and the spline components as variables. This is so that we can easily dispose of them when needed. In this case, I’m disposing of them every time I create a new path.
And this is the whole graph.
Cheers!
