udrive - Unreal Drive

Useful links:

Quick start:

  • How to setup plugin, see here

  • How to draw new road/intersection, see here

  • How to build mesh, see here

  • To work comfortably with the plugin, be sure to study the road model

Important: By default, the plugin includes a simple, lightweight road materials pack. The videos and images examples use the free CitySample material pack. It needs to be downloaded and installed separately.

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About

The UnrealDrive turns UnrealEngine into a powerful road network editor.

The UnrealDrive allows to interactively create:

  • Any types of road junctions, roundabouts, exits and entrances, etc.

  • Sidewalks and any types of special roads lanes: bicycle, bus, parking, tram, etc.

  • Generate road additional objects: street lights, vegetation(trees, bushes, grass), bridges etc.

  • Adjustable road markings for any road lane

  • Road metadata (attributes) - can be used for game mechanics, for examples: speed limits, vehicle movement priorities, triggers etc.

  • Decal generation - allows to apply the effects of rutting and asphalt wear, rutting from snow and dirt, etc.

Conceptually, the plugin solves two problems:

  • Creation of logical road networks (graphs). The road graphs can be used to create elements of game mechanics - traffic generation, laying out paths for game characters, etc. Also, in future releases it is planned to move the road graph functionality into a separate free or OpenSource plugin.

  • Procedural generation of 3D models based on the constructed road graphs.

The plugin provides flexible APIs (C++ and BluePrint), allowing to:

  • Customize the road network (for example, adding a new type of traffic lanes - tram),

  • Develop external algorithms for procedural generation (for example, generating bushes along the road).

  • Develop importers/exporters of road networks to/from any custom formats

  • Use the road graph to develop any gameplay logic.

Generated content can be used without the plugin itself, as these are simple StaticMesh assets, StaticMesh and SplineMesh components and Actors. This means they can be used on any platform (iOS, Android, PS5, XBox, etc). But if there is a need to use graphs in a game project (for example, to generate traffic), then the presence of the UnrealDrive plugin will be necessary in the project (I can provide support for any platform upon request).

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Roadmap
  • Develop a tools for fast intersection generation (currently, intersection modeling requires a lot of manual work)

  • Import OSM

  • Import/Export ASAM OpenDrive

  • Traffic generation using MassFramework and SUMO

  • Develop a framework for customizing traffic agent behavior for creating open-world games with a GTA style

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Dependencies

This plugin has dependencies on the following plugins (these are default plugins that come with Unreal Engine):

  • GeometryProcessing

  • MeshModelingToolset

  • StructUtils

  • ModelingToolsEditorMode