Object Positioning

Adjusting the location of the doors

Once you've done the previous steps you're ready to start adjusting the location of your doors. This process is fairly straightforward but has a few pitfalls that this page will go over.

Adjusting the Camera

The most obvious component that needs quickly addressing is the camera component. This can be done by moving the SpringArm Component to the desired location. You can also adjust the camera component by selecting the camera component, it operates as a standard camera.

Adjust the camera location using the SpringArm component

Adjusting the Doors

The doors are a little more involved, let's start with the front left door of the hatchback. Open the hatchback blueprint and select the door, and replace the sedan's door with the new hatchback mesh, naturally - the position will incorrect

The sedan door replaced with the new hatchback door.

You can eyeball the position of the mesh, or if you know the exact coordinates from your DCC you can input them into the new location. You can also utilise sockets in this stage - but for now we'll just be setting the position manually.

The location for this door is 84,-86,0.0

The door in the correct place

Now if we head on over to the event graph, we need to adjust the animation for this door in the event graph's timeline. Open up the "Front Left Door" Event graph. The logic we'll be focusing on there are the start and ending locations + rotations of the door.

The door logic in the Event graph, double click to open them

The variables we'll be adjusting to make the door open correctly.

In this instance the "Left Door Trans Start" and "Left Door Trans End" will be the same amount. This variable exists in the case of sliding doors, like the ones found on the box truck.

Copy and paste the location from the hatchback door into each of these variables

You can copy and paste the exact numbers by right clicking the location transform

You can paste the exact numbers by doing the same to the transform value on the variables! Remember to apply this to both the start and end variables. The scale is set incorrectly to 1.005, this can be adjusted to 1.

The rotation value can be manually adjusted in this instance. Pick a number you're comfortable with it rotating to in order to open, and set that variable on the Z-Axis. In this instance it opens 70 degrees.

The start and end values of "Left Door Rot Start" and "Left Door Rot End"

Your front left door should now open and close when interacted with.

Repeat this process on the other side, making sure to invert the scale axis accordingly and input the correct units for the corresponding doors. Many values will need inverting, including the rotation axis. Make sure you're updating the variables also!

Remember that all values will need adjusting to match up for the opposite side - this usually involves adding a negative value here and there.

If you've followed these steps correctly you should now have a front left and rear door set up to be opened when interacted with. You'll notice the UI isn't correctly placed and the two rear doors are also still there. We'll be using one of these for the trunk and and deleting the other.

Adding a Unique Door

Let's start with deleting the door we don't need. In this instance we'll use the rear right door

Delete the event graph for the right door

Delete the assets for the rear right door, including the UI elements and the blueprint

Since the Hatchback has no rear doors at all, we'll be using the code for the rear left door for the trunk instead. Like in the previous steps, replace the mesh of the rear left door with the new mesh - in this instance SM_HatchbackRearDoor_01a

You'll notice the mesh wont be correctly position, again you can adjust it by eye or grab the exact location from your DCC. These coordinates are -140,0.0,143

The door in the new location - note that the UI and Interaction BP are offset in the wrong location - we will fix this later

You'll also need to adjust the animation for the door opening. If you open the Rear Left Door Animation graph, you can adjust these settings in the exact same way as the front two doors.

The difference with this asset is the door now rotates on the Y-Axis - a -80 degree adjustment from the start and end Y-Axis rotations will set this up correctly.

Remember to update the starting locations also!

Updated start and end locations, as well as adjusting the rotation

Adding a Unique Door To a Vehicle with More than Four Doors

You may run into the scenario that you have four openable doors and also require a trunk. Information regarding that can be found in the BP_SUV blueprint. An extra interface action called "ExtraFunction" was added for this scenario.

Information regarding adding a completely new element can be found in the "Extra Elements" section.

The UI and Interaction Blueprints will be placed in strange locations, we'll go over adjusting these in the next section.

Exit Location

The exit location is defined by the "ExitLocation" component under the component tab

Make sure this element is off the ground to prevent clipping through the floor

Behaviour for this component can be problematic at speed or sharp angles, this will be addressed in a future update.

The Exit Location in the blueprint. The Y-Axis determines which way the player faces when they exit the vehicle.

Collisions and Headlights

Two invisible objects that need adjusting are collisions and headlights. As of right now they're still using the old sedan's meshes.

This can be corrected by simply replacing them with the correct components.

Replacing the hatchback's collision with the correct one

Replacing the hatchback's headlights with the correct one