This is a super beginner question…I have a particle system and I want to attach it to something that I can animate over time. For example, how do I do this:
That’s it. Simple. Easy to do in Maya and such, why is it so hard in Unreal? lol Thank you in advance!
Hello dranders,
For doing something as simple as this, it would most likely be best to use a Timeline inside of Blueprints. You can use the timeline to do all different types of things with translation, rotation, scale, and editing all different types of variables/properties.
You can find more on timelines here: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/UserGuide/Timelines/index.html
As far as attaching the Particle System, you could actually just make the Particle System as a child component of the sphere so that it is always attached but you can also used Attach To at runtime to attach it as well. The Particle System could also use a timeline to affect its particle effects.
Any chance someone can post an image of how to set up the graph to make the sphere move? I looked at the blueprints page link and I get how to make a curve, but that isn’t very complete…doesn’t show you how to hook it up. Thanks!
And what’s the difference between Event Graph and Construction Script? Thx!
There are lots of tutorials on how to change values like lights on/off but I’m not seeing a translateX/translateY/translateZ and hooking that up. ANY help would be appreciated…any links, images, etc. Thanks!
There is not an explicit translate function in Timelines, but locations in UE4 do use Vectors and Timelines can use the same thing.
The first step would be to make the blueprint for the sphere and create a timeline. When you create the timeline, open it up and add a vector graph. You can then name the graph whatever you want. If you wish to only make the sphere move in the Z axis, the next step would be to click the Eye icons beside the X and Y to hide those lines and only show the Z then add at least two keys by Shift-Left-Clicking on the graph. You can then set these keys to any time/value values that you wish. In my example, I used one key at 0 time and 0 value and a second key at 5 time (seconds) and 100 value. Be sure to check the “Use Last Keyframe” option.
After that, you can return to the Event Graph and start on the logic.
This is a very simple way to do this and there are certainly better ways but this will work for now. First I set up a variable to store the initial location of the sphere so we can avoid it starting from 0,0,0 when it gets moved. Next is to start the Timeline and hook it up to call “Set Actor Location” every time it updates the value from our graph. I then set it to add the output of that graph to the initial location variable from earlier to ensure that it moves from it’s initial location instead of the world origin.
Edit: If the sphere doesn’t move, you may gets some warnings in the output log. This is most likely a result of the Sphere being set to Static rather than Movable.
Hope this helps!
This is very helpful I think, thank you!!! What are the types of “set” and “+” …?? I am trying to find them in the zillions of named nodes in UE4 and don’t see them…thank you!
PLEASE let me know if you have a better idea of how I can achieve this motion, as this seems way more complicated than it should be. Here’s an example (the rotating around):
The set node is dependent on having a Variable. When you have a Variable in your blueprint, you can Get or Set that variable by right-clicking in the event graph and typing “Get variable name” or “Set variable name”. The + node is a Vector + Vector node, it should appear if you drag off the Timeline’s Vector (yellow) output and then enter + into the node search.
As for your other issue, it would be best to make a second question for that as this question has been answered. It’s good to keep each question on-topic as much as possible.
