I would like to setup a simple Wind Effect which affects cloth + foliage and may be dynamically modified through BP.
The most obvious way seems to be the use of a Wind Directional Source, however i just can’t find a proper way to link it with my foliage.
Another way seems to be the use of a Wind Directional Source for the Cloth and a Material Parameter Collection for my foliage and combine both with BP but this feels somehow awkward and I’m also concerned about the performance of this solution with tons of foliage and cloth.
There is a known bug that is reported that doesn’t allow the wind actor to be changed via Blueprint when the game is running from what I remember. I’ll look tomorrow morning when I’m back in the office and see what the status is.
Setting up wind in general is rather easy though. You only need to place your wind actor in your scene with the direction, strength, and speed that you’d like. For adding wind to your models that aren’t SpeedTree (as they bring it over automatically) you can read about that on this page in documentation: Creating SpeedTree Models for Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation
I’ve checked the Content Examples. Though, they use rather complex materials for a very low amount of foliage with Material Parameter Collections. I do understand how this works (as mentioned in my first post) though I do not know if thats really the proper way of handling tons of foliage and cloth dynamically.
Yes, I’ve read about this Bug too, however somebody actually mentioned a workaround “modify the transformation of the Wind Actor and it will update the wind properties”. I haven’t tested this, as I yet have to manage to link my foliage with the Wind actor.
Unfortunately I’m not using Speedtree, I use custom meshes with vertexpainted tree trunks. I’ve checked your provided link several times, but I can’t find any information about non Speedtree models on that Page. What I get from it is “Pick your desired Windattribute inside Speedtree and than alter it to your needs through UE4 Material.”
The maximum I could interpret into this is: You can’t use the wind actor for custom foliage meshes and are forced to use material parameter collections.
“The maximum I could interpret into this is: You can’t use the wind actor for custom foliage meshes and are forced to use material parameter collections.”
Bump, Bump…
I feel as if this hasnt been added only to force people into subscribing to speed tree…I would very much like to know if this has been fixed by now,…if not im truly disappointed
I swear you can’t ask about foliage wind hookup on these forums without someone trying to get you to subscribe to Speedtree. I’ve been searching for a solution for years.
Sascha Henrichs made wind plugin for UE, it is on marketplace and supports wind interaction with other objects in scene than cloth and vegetation. You should check it out.