In our game we have basically a chain of objects connected through Unreal’s UPhysicsConstraintComponent. The objects are connected with quite a bit of springiness and can build up quite a lot of velocity. At certain moments in gameplay, the time scale of the game is slowed down to a very, very slow speed and we then want to completely cancel out all forces applied by the constraints, making our chain of objects one long and static line of objects. To achieve this, what I’m currently doing is to lock each constraint (setting SetAngularSwing1Limit, SetAngularSwing2Limit and SetAngularTwistLimit to ACM_Locked) and then call SetAllPhysicsAngularVelocity and SetAllPhysicsLinearVelocity with a zero vector input. At the same time, I teleport the objects to the position I want them to be in, using SetWorldLocation and SetWorldRotation. All of this happen continuously over a brief period of time, in which the game speeds back up to normal time scale.
Most of this actually works. The chain of objects before ‘stiff’ and are aligned in a straight line as I want them to and the game speeds up to normal game speed. The problem is that when I reach normal game speed again, I want to release the constraints in the chain so they can once again move freely. At this point I’d expect them to remain resting in the straight line I’ve aligned them in, until some sort of force is applied to the objects in the chain. However, as soon as I set constraint limits back to ACM_Free, the constraints starts moving exactly like before I locked them. So in reality what I achieve is more of a “pause” of the constraints rather than actually stopping them. The weird thing is that the longer I stay in this “pause” state, the less the constraints move after I set them free again. As if the physics of the constraints are being calculated “in the background”, while the constraints are locked.
Ideally, what I want is a way to instantly kill all built up momentum/velocity/energy in the constraints. Make them instantly come to a complete rest, so I can move the objects into place and keep them there until some sort of force is once again applied to the objects in the chain. I just can’t find a way to do that when checking the documentation and the various hacks I’ve tried out so far haven’t worked. I realize the problem might be a bit complicated to understand based on my description, but due to legal and confidentiality reasons, I can’t actually post any videos/images of the issue. Basically, my question simply is if there’s a way to remove all velocity from constraints?