There appear to be 3 ways in UE4 of creating volumes to be used as triggers or interaction zones: The “trigger volume” class, any of the trigger shape classes such as “box trigger”, “capsule trigger” and “sphere trigger” and finally the shape component item in the blueprints components screen.
When should we be using which type of trigger volume?
Personally I prefer “trigger volume” as this is in fact a Brush actor meaning the vertices can be manipulated in geometry edit mode for fine placement (trigger volumes are derived as ATriggerVolume.h → AVolume.h → ABrush.h) but I’m very confused whether this is far too expensive of a trigger type and if I should instead rely solely on the shape based trigger actors or components (these are not vertex/brush based so I’m presuming they are more performant)
I’d appreciate any insight on why these different types exist in the first place and when I should be using which for optimal performance.
PS: somewhat related forum thread - Are non-box trigger volumes (Cylinder/Sphere) significantly more expensive to use? - Debugging, Optimization, & Profiling - Unreal Engine Forums
PPS: In my experience I’ve found the “trigger volume” class to be somewhat unstable/buggy at times (eg: see this and this) I’m guessing this instability stems from it sharing code with BSP brushes which themselves could need an uplift according to this item on trello.