When you loop over the number of spline points to start adding power pole meshes (~17:20), you need to subtract one, otherwise you will add 2 power poles on the last spline point.
Thanks for this, your delivery and clear explanations are perfect, But Im having an issue where My cables are still pointing to the Actor Origin like @32:36 . But its not letting me add the elements under the Cable info struct Editor. I click but nothing is happening Not sure why :( But its letting me add elements to the override settings above? . Im confused
@@ira-game7154 I belive so as I followed and re watched parts again and cant see when I did wrong/or missed. If I do what you do here. @30:45 Mine behaves exactly the same and they actually connect So I think the issue is after this
I decided to focus on the cable struct editor not letting me add elements So I recreated them and still couldn't add them, So I re-watched the beginning bit where you started to place them and I think I solved it. Turns out I must have been distracted at the time & put the cable info struct editor in place of the array of power line posts var which is connected to the clear node . So the cable struct editor was being cleared as soon as I clicked to add them making it look like it just wasn't letting me, Doh!
Everything is working as intended, I just have one issue where my Cable seems to have unlimited slack in the middle and just falls through the floor and keeps falling. The cables are all connected at each end correctly, and if it switch to the set end location from the add cable component node that work without any slack, I have gone over this looking for the issue and trying to solve it, Focusing mainly on the get vector length/cable length area But can figure out the issue :( Any ideas?
SOLVED :) I had my solver iterations set to ZERO on the cable struct editor elements in the details panel, setting them to 1 solved the issue. I will leave all these questions and solutions up to help others that also end up like me :) This is One of the most useful BPs I have now :) huge thanks again :)
I did some simple improvements to the cables - for better performance - after "add cable component" node - add "set cast shadow" and disable the boolean "new cast shadow" - now your cables wont cast shadows which is super handy!
Hi, Thanks for the help, I'm just wondering 2 things, 1) Setting the texture on the spline, rather than manually everytime 2) being able to select the mesh rather than it random select, so say point 1, 2, 4, 5 do mesh 1, and point 2 do mesh 2 for example. And maybe if there is a way to auto enter the cable values on the settings based on the socket when you create the spline in level
Hello Ira, A great tutorial, especially for a newbie like me. I have an issue with the cables. Between the pole 1 and pole 2 I can adjust the cables, via the override function, with it slightly drooping, but between the rest of the poles the cables are dead straight and cannot be adjusted. I have looked back at the tutorial several times, but do not see a solution. What am I doing wrong?
@@ira-game7154 it did man, I'm an environment artist and was always hesistant to dig deeper into tool creation and such. But I could expand this system by making it adhere to the landscape by doing linetraces at the point position and moving the spline points to that z position. I also added seed based randomization for the rotation of the points and slack. It's not much but it gave me a really good taste of what is possible and I enjoyed it very much! This gave me the confidence to actually start working with Houdini (might seem unrelated, but it's not so far off :D ). I started making a procedural house generator and so far it is as much fun as your tutorial and expanding it. Btw. I really enjoyed it. You have a great teaching style and I had to chuckle a few times
@@hightechnician This is the nicest thing anyone has said to me in weeks lol. Thank you. I'd love to you what you are working on. Feel free to drop by the Ira discord and share if you are into that sort of thing. :) discord.gg/hSqUD2k
How can I add a static mesh variable into cable overide struct to be able to replace meshes by hand in places where i want to do this instead making them 100% random?
@@miloszgierczak4806 Off the top of my head you could add a static mesh actor variable to the struct and when a mesh is added to it, it creates a valid reference for a static mesh in the struct. Add some type of is valid check and use that ref on pole generation instead of a random one.
@@ira-game7154 Thanks! Today im also working on your system as a base for my poles, and i found an interesting bug while i added a cusotm material for my cables with wind. When you spawn a cables from pole to pole, your system spawns additional cables in each socket of the mesh in the last point of the spline which are not connected to anything. I think it has something to do with the loop? We didnt define where is the end of the spline in the Construct script? Can you think a bit on this problem? Im a 3d artist - but a BP beginner (total beginner :D) wish to become a technical artist one day! Regards, and thank you for your last reply!
@Ira - game huray! I found the solution for my last question, and @areito was right (in the comment section below)! You missed the subtract integer (-1) for the last spline point while defining the index, and your pole and cable renders twice on the end of the spline! You guys are great! Thank you, im learning a lot! :D
Thank you! To answer your question enabling that bool will allow the cable to have a stiffness setting applied. If its not set on the cable, it will be floppyer and take longer to settle down when the game starts. There are plenty more settings that can be added to that function as well. Hope that helps!
@@ira-game7154 Thank you for the quick respond. I was just wondering because I tried it and it worked but I though I could ask to see if there is a reason that you didn't use it. thank you again!
Hey there. Look for the cable variable "Num Segments" the number corresponds with the number of segments. Higher segments = a smoother cable. Give that a try.
any more tips for debugging the issue where the cables all go to the origin? I have checked and double checked the cable socket names in all places, I went through the tutorial twice! It doesn't seem to be reading the values from the blueprint maybe. When I change the cable width in the blue print for example it doesn't do anything. I am going crazy! Any tips for debugging? It's hard to know where it's going wrong, since mostly when I try and watch a value it says variable out of scope but I think that might be normal. In addition do you have any thoughts as to how to convert the cables to something more raytrace friendly. As far as I can see raytracing doesnt work with cables so I get no shadows from them. For meshes along a spline I can merge them into an actor that raytracing can see, but not cables.
Well, I'm inclined to say that there is something you're overlooking from the tutorial. There's a small chance the struts are acting up and you have to save and restart the editor. That's Hapend to me in the past. As for ray tracing, my project doesn't use that so I'd have to dig into in order to see what's compatible and what's not. Sorry you are having troubles feel free to drop by the Ira discord and I'll give you a hand. discord.gg/hSqUD2k
At last, a blueprint tutorial that doesn't assume the users capabilities! Well paced and allowed me to follow. I am making a 2 mile tram track and you cannot believe how useful this is to me. I noticed someone asked about changing the colour of the cables and to be honest I didn't understand the reply. I thought about making colour a variable part of the cable info structure so it could be adjusted easily under the cable info structure editor and overrides but failed miserably in my attempt. Is this possible or am I jumping ahead of myself? Many thanks for a great piece of work anyway.
Hey, good to hear! The cable color is set via whatever material is on the cable. So, the simple solution is to set the material on the cable, and that material has a color that you picked.
@@ira-game7154 Thanks for the very prompt reply, much appreciated. Where I am being thick is that I expect to have a "cable" mesh which I can attach a material to but the lovely cables just appear as if by magic from your blueprint so no idea what to do with the material
I don't see why not. It's a little complicated to explain via a reply message, but, it's doable. At a very high level you could simulate destruction on the poles with chaos, and you could add physical simulations to the cables. That being said you'd need to optimize things if you want a lot of them around.
Well, there are a number of ways it could be done, and depending on your needs those paths might change. I would recommend checking the distance of the previous pole with the new one and then outputting the distance on a print string. That way you generally know the proper distance. I feel like this is something that just needs to look proper and not be exact.
The tutorial is amazing! however my blueprint can not find the end point, so all cables are stuck at the same position. I've watched this tutorial like 3 times. But probably gonna have to watch it once more)
Awesome video. -I just came in to let you know that epic Games are using your code in their automotive winter scene free asset, so great job. -also I just want to point out a mistake at the beginning where you use number of spline points as the last index in for loop, number of spline points don't start at 0. Let's say you have 3 spline points, so number of spline points would be 3, for loop will start from 0 to 3 so it'll run 4 times that means it'll spawn 4 meshes instead of 3, the 4th mesh will be overlapping the 3rd mesh so you won't be able to notice that if you're using the same mesh, this wouldn't cause much problems for now since you're recycling current index for another use but it may cause various problems in other scenarios. The way to fix it is instead of pluging get number of spline point directly into last index in for loop subtract one from get number of spline point and then plug it in last index in for loop.
Hey there! They are using my code? This is interesting I'm downloading it now to see what you mean :). Yeah, this tutorial is a few years old and I understand what you are saying. I'll do an update at some point!
@@souhaibbenchaker4824 Haha, that's pretty funny. I'm actually releasing an advanced version of this system. I'll make a joke and tweet at them when it's ready. :)
Slack is around 48 minute mark. Color is set by the material on the cable. You can create a dynamic material instance and modify it at runtime to easily change the color.
Hi. I repeat as in the video, but all the cables are linked to the Central point in the center, where the zero point of the spline is located. Cables are not straightened (
@@ira-game7154 Thanks. checked and indeed, the names of the sockets were different. But the cables of the last post still go lie down on the ground ) Thank you very much for your help. The lesson is very interesting. Still would snapping mesh to the surface do and a steep bluprint tickles )
@@ira-game7154 I fixed the error, but still thank you very much ) I Sat down for the lesson late at night, because I made stupid mistakes ) If you have the opportunity to write down the lesson how to use this method to make procedural houses from blocks. And once again, a huge thank you!
