How would you proceed to make a Civilization style unit with individual collisions?

[Anthony-Mostly-Harm1 (Anthony-Mostly-Harmless)]

Hello,

At the moment I am trying to create a Civilization style unit as shown in the picture:

Each unit is comprised of 3-4 skeletal meshes that all move together.

I tried setting this up as a Character blueprint as such:

Where the initial character mesh serves as parent to two other meshes. This works well enough as they all move together but I have a problem when it comes to collision with the ground.

Right now the whole unit (all three meshes) will go up and down dependent on the central Capsule Component. What I would like is for each mesh to be at a different height dependent on what they are standing on.

I tried adding a Box Collision object and using as parent for one mesh as shown in the picture below. I made the box mesh quite big so the the unit should normally be floating in the air above the others but this does not seem to work as all meshes end up falling until the Capsule Component interacts with the underlying mesh.

What am I doing wrong ?

Thanks,

[Polite_Muon]

Hello Anthony-Mostly-Harm1, and thank you for posting.

I have given your implementation a lot of thought and testing on my end.

From I can see, movement relies on that capsule component and since that’s the default root that cannot be changed or reordered, you may need to look for another solution to your units entirely.

I have noticed the same results as you when adding two new skeletal meshes but due to the floor collision being reliant on that main capsule component, the entirety of the bp_unit will think its on the ground.

The BP_Units may need a brain of their own, especially if the terrain calls for being routed by steep inclines.

For a small incline, in a tight knit group, the built-in IK does render a result but it isn’t perfect as there will need to be some collisions that need to be worked out.

I would consider in spawning them individually with limited AI logic.

I apologize for not having the exact answer but I hope you get some ideas from what I have posted for you.