Hitscan / Instant Hit or ribbon Tracer. How to have it move towards target?

[TK-Bear]

So I am trying to make a tracer for my instant hit weapons that looks similar to the effect of star wars blasters for example. I have tried both Ribbon tracers and Mesh Tracers and I am very close but just a little off on the effect I want and was wondering if anyone here might be able to help.

What I have accomplished is I can spawn a tracer and to flows the correct direction out of the gun. The problem is it is using the animation direction, which is not in line with where the projectile would be hitting.

The following screen shots are how I attempted the effect as a mesh tracer, which has the best look for what I want if it would go towards the EndPoint. I am spawning the tracer based on the character and muzzle rotation and it is shooting forward and close to the end point target. What I want next is for that to flow more towards the target, ad I have tried gravity and attraction parms to the “EndPoint” set but it doesn’t seem to work.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=76056&d=1453939368

https://forums.unrealengine.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=76057&d=1453939615

https://forums.unrealengine.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=76058&d=1453939808

With a Beam, I can get the “EndPoint” location to work with the target parm, but it is not quiet the look I am going for as it is a beam and not a flowing tracer.

I did seem somewhere that people recommended ribbon tracers but I am having similar issues with them. I can get them to flow the correct direction out of the gun but not towards the target specified by the instant hit weapon.

Would this effect be possible to accomplish with the mesh particle? I know this might be easier with a projectile weapon but I like the instant hit. Even if technically the instant hit tracer is behind the actual hit. The way I want to paint these tracers is they will not flow the whole direction of start to finish but I need them to flow in the correct direction.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Marshall

[TK-Bear]

So I know I am close, but I am trying to get the particle to travel towards a user set vector. Do I need to change the blueprint?

In the picture below you can see the issue in that the particle is flowing to the left of the target. I have this issue if I use Ribbon, Mesh, or just a particle. I’ve tried point Gravity set to my end point, Point Attraction, and every other setting I can think of and nothing seems to work for me. I know I am close but I cannot figure it out. I know the end point is working because the beam works with target, but I cannot get that to work for anything else.

Thanks in advance for any help, and if I figure it out I will post here for others as well.

[TK-Bear]

Ok, So I figured it out, and cannot believe I was stuck on it as long as I had been. But sometimes you go down the wrong rabbit hole and you have to come back to it after taking a break. Anyhow the answer was in my blueprint the whole time. I was spawning emitter based on the character’s weapon rotation, When in fact I should have been calculating the rotation / direction of the muzzle location and the end point. I had all the information from the start, I was just using the wrong function.

I was approaching it as I needed to set an attraction at the end point never realizing all I needed to do was calculate the rotational direction between muzzle and end point. Below is a snap shot of what I did and I hope this helps someone else.

[anonymous_user_0e3f07e8]

Thanks so much man, worked like a charm! I myself tried to figure that out by a good day or so, until I searched a bit more and came across this thread/answer here, all by You! …Thanks again man, awesomesauce (fellow GS user here too …)

[TK-Bear]

Thanks for the comment. I’m super glad this helped someone else as well. I was scratching my head for the longest time on this one.