I’m working on a prototype for a sports game using physically simulated characters. So each character is simply a ragdoll, and they move about by applying torques to the various body parts. I’m doing this with the default UE4 mannequin and am making progress, but I’m stumped trying to figure out how to create numerous ragdolls of varying shapes and sizes (I’m still a long way off from implementing the create-a-player feature, but the method of implementing it might determine how I organize the work that I’m doing right now).
So basically for the character I would specify a height (6’1", 6’2", etc) and a weight (180 lbs, 181 lbs, 300 lbs, etc) and I would get a ragdoll of that size, with an appropriate physics asset to match. How could I implement this? The only thing I can think of is to create a separate skeletal mesh with accompanying physics asset for every possible combination, but that doesn’t scale if I allow any possible combination between 5’0" and 7’0", and 100 lbs to 350 lbs. I’ve searched for information on scaling skeletal meshes, and scaling their physics assets, but haven’t found any information. My character currently consists of a USkeletalMeshComponent, and I’ve read about creating a modular pawn by splitting up the character mesh into individual body parts and composing them manually in the blueprint editor, but I don’t know how well that would work.
Is there a better solution to this problem?