I’m looking to create ragdoll physics characters. I am beginner level in Unreal. Having looked at this problem and the pieces Unreal can do out-of-the-box for you, I don’t think the remaining pieces are too much for even a beginner to get something decent working.
The above video is for a Unity Asset Store pack, I couldn’t find anything similar on the Unreal Store (please link me if you know of one).
It shows the important pieces of the puzzle:
Character physics movement
Arm articulation
Grabbing objects & environmental reaction
1. Physics Movement
I followedthis tutorial on setting up a physics character in UE4, which seems to be as advanced as tutorials on this topic go for Unreal.
This tutorial uses a pill-collision instead of a physics-based approach. This causes strange visual issues. It doesn’t seem to be true ragdolling, which will look quite obvious to players.
2. Arm Movement
I would like for the arms to move - eg. if the right joystick is pushed left, both arms go left. As it is now, the arms at least flail around when I run/bounce off the environment.
In theory, I should be able to read joystick X-axis, and perhaps I am able to apply that to the arms somehow?
3. Grabbing objects, dragging them/throwing them
From my research, it seems like I can attach collision spheres to the hand bones of my character, and could check for other actors in that volume.
I don’t know how I would attach the hands to grab and to get the other actor to move with the hands.
I understand with not much completed that this seems like a “build-my-game-for-me” post, but any help with any of these individual problems will help me get a good start.
ALS4 doesn’t quite fit the bill but could potentially be useful, thanks for at least directing me to it, it’s interesting.
The physical animation videos are all roughly on the same content as the vid I linked in the OP, searches for ‘UE4 grabbing’ and ‘physical grab’ are Skyrim / Half Life 2 Gravity Gun style item pick up rather than in the video showing off the effect where the characters hands attach and move the container
It requires a bit of extra work to get what you are looking for.
you will need a hidden mesh that has SetSimulatePhysics = false;
another skeletal mesh that is a ragdoll.
now you will need to add forces to each bone to the ragdoll bone’s position and rotations to match the animation currently playing in the other skeletal mesh. This is very hit and miss.
I Don’t believe Physical Animation Component does something similar to Gangbeast as it’s based on non-Physical movement.
To create something similar to gang beast, you will need to be able to simulate full local-based torque-driven movement with a custom physical movement component.
