Possible to Change Wind Strength in Level Blueprint?

Hi I’m having some difficulty changing wind strength via blueprint. I placed a WindDirectionalSource in my scene and set the strength to 0. What I’d like to do is set up an input key to turn the wind on with blueprint.

Here’s what I came up with:

When I hit the input key, nothing happens in game, however I can see the strength value set to 10 in the details panel. I’m confused why the change isn’t affecting the game.

Any ideas? Am I missing something? Thanks!

I would also like to know if this is supposed to work or not?. Don’t know if it’s a bug that it doesn’t work or if functionality just hasn’t been added yet?.

Hi Daphnis26 -

What do you have in your level which interacts with Wind? Usually a Material will require a Wind setup to be added to the setup and a wind setup which specifically allows input from the Wind Actor as opposed to a simulated wind effect with just numbers.

Also remember that to use wind as an effector of physics based objects you will need to increase the strength in such a way as to have the wind strength and speed overcome the mass physics of the object.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

Hi Eric, thanks for the reply. I am simulating cloth (used for hair and clothing).

I’d like to set up windy zones outside, and calmer interiors, so that my characters hair doesn’t blow when she steps inside.

How could I do this?

I am sorry to just jump in at the middle, but I can confirm the same happens for me. I have a wind actor and at launch it works, it blows the cloth, but I can’t change it during game play, rather, it doesn’t affect the cloth when I do change it.

I want basically the same effect so when you’re outside, the cloth blow in the wind but inside it does not.

Hi Daphnis26 -

I am still working on this one for you, but I want to double check that you have tested the Cloth physics work in the Persona editor and you have your APEX cloth asset imported and in place correctly.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

Thank you, yes the cloth does work properly in Persona, and I am also able to preview the wind effect there.

I used Maya to export the APEX files, and I’ve used both available file types. Currently I am using .apb files.

The wind effect does work in the level. I can set the value in the editor before launching the game. However I cannot seem to control the strength in-game. I can see the blueprints working correctly, but the wind effect doesn’t update.

Thanks for the help!

I’m glad you got this question to resurface :slight_smile: Let’s hope it can be resolved!

Seems like a bug to me. I can dynamicly change the wind in the Editor and it dynamicly changes but It does not work during gameplay. I can see that the Values are changing from the Wind but it does not gets applied to the world.

I’ve got the same problem. I want to dynamicly change wind directional source’s properties during gameplay, but somehow it doesn’t work. I tried to change it during matinee using float property track, but it doesn’t work either. Also couldn’t add wind directional source actor to class blueprint when I wanted got to this properties this way.
Any ideas?

Hey Daphnis26 (and everyone) -

After some research and discussions here, it turns out that the wind directional source is set up in code to allow change to the values only through its UProperty directly from Slate (so from the details panel) and not through blueprint. Our Engineers are working on changing this function and opening it up to the editing in Blueprints. I unfortunately do not have a timeline for this change, but it is now fully on our radar.

Thank you all for your patience -

Eric Ketchum

Thank you Eric, I am happy to hear that it is being worked on!

Thank you Eric. Very good news.

Has this been fixed yet?

Any news?

I currently use a simple workaround for this. I basically spawn a new one and destroy the old one for whatever wind strength I need. Spawning a new one does allow the cloth to use that setting and of course first destroy the old one. Not ideal but works for now.

Hey -

We still have this issue on a roadmap, but there is nothing new to report as of yet.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

How do you change that setting after you spawn another one? It still has the same strength (default) if you spawn it and you can’t change it through blueprints.

From the SpawnActor node you can drag from the Return Value, then Get Component. Then drag from the component, you can Set Speed and Strength. On the SpawnActor, Spawn Transform input, you can set a rotation value for the direction.

Sorry for all the posts but I found another bit of workaround to get the values to actually work. So you spawn the actor, get the component, set the values and right after that, set it’s world location to another value.

So, it seems by moving the wind actor after setting new values, now the cloth uses those new settings.