AdamCodd/unreal-engine-5-raw · Datasets at Hugging Face

How to merge two or more Static Mesh Actors into a single Actor in Unreal Engine.

This is not a comprehensive list of every Actor type available in Unreal Engine. Some plugins and project templates add their own Actors, and certain Actors may not be available for all projects.

Physics Volume Actor

Describes the properties of Physics Volumes in Unreal Engine.

Static Mesh Actors

Place Static Mesh Actors in your Level to create your game world.

Skeletal Mesh Actors

Use Skeletal Mesh Actors to create player avatars and populate your game world.

Geometry Brush Actors

Guide to using BSP brushes to create level geometry in Unreal Engine.

Camera Actors

Understanding the fundamentals of Cameras in Unreal Engine.

Audio Volume Actor

Audio Volume reference details

Player Start Actor

Use Player Start Actors to set up starting locations for players.

Trigger Volume Actors

Actor that can be activated and cause events to occur in the Level.

Volume Actors

Reference for the different kinds of Volume Actors in Unreal Engine.

Pain-Causing Volume Actor

Pain-Causing Volume reference details

Decal Actors

A guide to using the Deferred Decal actor.

3D Text Actor

Guide to placing 3D Text and using it to create motion graphics.

Target Point Actors

Working with Actors

Common Actor Types

Remarks

Guide to creating and using Target Actors.

AnimDynamics

The AnimDynamics Animation Blueprint node is a light-weight physics simulation solution, that you can use to apply physics-based, secondary animation to parts of a character's Skeletal Mesh at runtime. Unlike the RigidBody node that uses the character's Physics asset, the AnimDynamics node simulates its own physics bodies, to increase your projects performance.

With the AnimDynamics node, you can apply simulated-physics motion to parts of your character's skeletal mesh, such as, necklaces, bracelets, wires, or other items, in conjunction with character motion.

Here, the AnimDynamics node is used to dynamically drive the motion of the character's antenna, to react to the motion of the character's head during animation playback.

The AnimDynamics node is a low-performance cost physics-solver that is processed on the AnimGraph at runtime. In order to achieve a low performance cost, the AnimDynamics node makes a few approximations that are important to consider:

Simulated boxes are used instead of the character's bones or physics bodies, to calculate inertia for each segment.

Collision is not calculated; instead, constraints can be used to restrict movement.

The AnimDynamics node supports Linear, Angular and Planar constraints to simulate physically-influenced motion. Linear and Angular constraints can be driven by springs to provide a more bouncy feel, while Planar constraints can be used to create a plane that the object will not cross. You can toggle each of these constraints, and adjust their associated properties in the AnimDynamics node's Details panel.

Using the AnimDynamics node you can apply simulated-physics motion to any object on your character using a bone as a reference point. Here is an example of the AnimDyamics node being used to add dynamic motion to a drum that is reacting to the motion of the character's running animation.

By selecting the drum's bone as the Bound Bone, you can control the physics-driven motion by defining a bounding box with the Box Constraints property. The Local Joint Offset is an offset from the Bound Bone's joint, that you can use to determine the reference point of the constraints.

By leaving the Box Constraints and the Local Joint Offset properties as their default values, you may not see any movement. This is because the constraints are preventing any motion on the object. By reducing the bounding box's dimensions, you will see motion.

Here, the AnimDynamics's Debug properties are enabled. You can use these debug drawings to visually see the Bounding Box and Local Joint Offset properties as they influence the mesh.

In this example, Rotation Constraints are also set, so the drum can only move along a set axis, within a specified range. The applied Rotation Constraint along the Y axis is represented by the green angle overlay, and is useful to prevent the mesh from overlapping on itself.

For more information about creating single-body physics simulations using the AnimDynamics node, see the Creating Dynamic Animations workflow guide.

You can also set an External Force to the physics-simulate motion, to weight the object being simulated, or apply more inertia for more reactive motion. By default, an External Force vector can be applied using the pin in the AnimGraph.

For more information about using an External Force to create physics simulations using the AnimDynamics node, see the Creating Dynamic Animations workflow guide.

By enabling the Chain property in the Details panel, you can use the AnimDynamics node is to simulate the motion and collision of a chain of objects.

Chain simulation is a much more resource intensive simulation, than a single-body simulation. With chain simulation, linked constraints now need to be solved, which requires many more iterations to correctly converge. Iteration counts are also configurable per-node using the Num Solver Iterations Pre Update and the Num Solver Iterations Post Update properties in the Details panel.