Realistic Physical Objects in VR - Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial

This step-by-step tutorial shows how to rig in Blender and then use in UE4 a realistic physical object like an old lamp.
The object can be grabbed and carried around while it still collides with the other physical objects in the level.
Based on my demo here: • Realistic Physics Asse...
The old lantern mesh (slightly edited) is courtesy of Iridesium:
free3d.com/3d-...

[@stephenhidalgo7608]

Nice, would it be request for a interactive weapon (e.g inserting magazine, or bullet shells etc.) tutorial, thanks for helping the community

[@bob28418]

fantastic sir keep up the good work

[@nubeslocas]

this tutorial saved me SOOO many headaches! Thanks man!!

[@shingAMarie]

Hey Marco I just stumbled upon your page. I haven't seen anything much yet but it all looks promising. Thanks for it all. The initial blender part sunk my heart hahah because I have been avoiding that like the plague. But thankfully I can still understand the tutorial. Hopefully we seee many more from you!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Malo Sal LOL! I am showing Blender because this is what everyone has easily access to. Blender has great functionalities, but the worst UX/UI ever conceived. Bforartists is a better fork from that standpoint. Anyway you can easily do the same with Maya and others, I am sure you knew already.

[@DanielMaxSteinberg]

Hi Marco, I just want to say I love your content! I'm a college student in the US excited about developing for VR, and your videos have been extremely helpful. I'm currently trying to make a VR "grab-able" book. My technique, which may be a little circular, is to make a simple hinge like this and take the angle from it to drive a more complicated alembic animation of a book opening. The player would be interacting with this skeletal mesh while thinking they're interacting with the alembic itself. I hope that works!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Hi Daniel, nice meeting you! I am really pleased to hear my tutorials are helpful. :-) The best way about to verify if your concept is sound, is to setup a quick project to test it. It doesn't have to look pretty, but it has to have the basic interaction in place so you (or, better, someone else representing your average player) can try it out. You want to find out rather sooner than later if your idea works as expected or if you need to look for alternative solutions. Having taught myself to many students, this is one of my top recommendations to you. Good luck with your project and, if you get stuck and need help, you can always post on the official VR/AR Forum or join the Unreal Slackers server on Discord.

[@DanielMaxSteinberg]

Thanks so much for the reply, Marco! I'm hoping to get a basic implementation to work soon. Thanks for pointing me towards the forum and Discord server too, I'll definitely use those when I need help! :)

[@PongaloenH]

THANKS! More VR tutorials pleasee!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Sure. I have some more in the pipeline. What would you like to see next?

[@AICineVerseStudios]

It would be great if we can have a tutorial on event dispatchers in VR where from a widget events, one can interact with level blueprint (for example an interactable widget menu, firing event to run a matinee through level blueprint) Also if possible, how to access another blueprint from a widget in VR.

[@PongaloenH]

Hi Marco thanks for ask! It would be interesting to show how to create loading screens in vr. It might be done with level streaming but I'm not sure. I mean a 3D loading screen ;)

[@PongaloenH]

Also will be really awesome how to punch and get an AI reaction in VR with ue4. There isn't any tutorial about this!!

[@Paulicz]

​@@marcoghislanzoni Hello! Please make a tutorial about right pickuping (apex) destructibles and chunks in VR. Still unanswered topic for me...

[@luarlarep6069]

Great tutorial , thanks you

[@WantedinHell]

Thanks, saved me some time. :)

[@joker-jd3jd]

What version of blender

[@joker-jd3jd]

Pls New version

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Why? It works with the latest versions of the engine as well.

[@joker-jd3jd]

@@marcoghislanzoni It has been 3 years since the blender in the video is too old and I could not do the project. Pls pls pls

[@isimsiz2520]

@@marcoghislanzoni yes yes pls New version

[@xdz4464]

Thanks for the tutorial，I come across an issue that I can't figure out how to fix. Please help.I want to push a box with my hand. How to make the box stationary and my hand won't penetrate it

[@marcoghislanzoni]

That is rather complex and I cannot explain it in a comment. Have a look at the VR Expansion plugin, it has a working concept about physical hands.

[@xdz4464]

@@marcoghislanzoni Thank you for your reply

[@struggling3dartist910]

What wouldn't I give for a Desktop PC version of this. Does anyone know if there is such tutorial anywhere?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Not sure what you mean with Desktop version. The same physics can be applied also to a desktop game, not only VR.

[@Zanywaney]

Could this tutorial be applied to other physics based objects like flails or ropes?

[@ShunRayShine]

Great Great tutorial!!! This save my project♪Thanks a lot! One question, is it possible to use other hand to control bottom part? Same skeletal mesh situation.Left hand grab handle.Right hand grab bottom part to control rotation.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

You are welcome. Yes, it is possible. You need to use a technique similar to what I show here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ramuipqAoshol5o

[@AICineVerseStudios]

Marco, for me you are UE VR genius. Honestly been working on a VR project from last one month and seen countless tutorials but I have never come across as advance and as simple as yours. This tutorial, though I have nothing for my project to use it for but definitely I'm getting ideas where I can use it. I just have a question , in the drone youtube you made , in which you were able to see through drone camera on a tablet actor. How were you able to show from drone's camera into the tablet screen?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Thanks pal! :-) The drone is equipped with a SceneCapture2D component, which acts like a camera but renders what it "sees" to a texture on every frame. Then you use that texture to make a material. Apply the material to a plane and you have a screen showing what the drone sees. Mind the fact that the behavior of the SceneCapture2D component is currently a bit buggy in VR, so it may not always work as expected. This is being investigated by Epic.

[@AICineVerseStudios]

Cool, well as long as the functionality is there , it will surely enhance in the future by epic but what I see till now can work for a proof of concept I'm working on.

[@afan3d907]

finally Thanks.....

[@Maxparata]

Wow! Just discovered your channel, I don't even remember how, but there are definitely cool stuff around here! Keep up the good job! I would love to see more and more VR tutorials in the future. Do you know, by any chance, how to have access to the HTC vive front camera in VR and display it on a simple render texture?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Hi Maxime, thanks for your nice words! Unfortunately I don't know much about the Vive since I develop with the Oculus Rift. I think I saw this question before though, so you may want to Google it or ask on the forums.

[@bluethumbbuttoneek9465]

The blend file was all 1 mesh? The handle wasn't seperate when I opend it

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Bluethumbbutton Eek that is a skeletal mesh. The handle is connected to a bone and the bucket to another bone.

[@bluethumbbuttoneek9465]

@@marcoghislanzoni ah thanks will try again soon 😅

[@MRGiorMR]

how do you pick up skeletal mesh, i cant grab but it interacts when i push the button of controller?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

11:17 in the tutorial. Make sure Generate Overlap Events is checked.

[@CuboidCarrot]

Hello! Wanted to thank you for the tutorial. I did come across an issue that I can't figure out how to fix. Please help. When I pick up the lantern, it stiffens up and does not swing the way it should. It does seem to swing how it should when I drop it however. Another thing is when I bring the lantern towards my body, it flings me away. I feel like those two issues are linked since the regular BP cube does not. Please note that I am very new to UE4, so most likely...and hopefully, I merely committed a dumb.

[@AOTAvids]

Did you figure out your problem? Set the collison on the lamp first and foremost so it just overlaps the player and maybe like projectiles too just to be sure. Then to make sure that the physics work in the physics asset menu is a bit more of a process, but just making sure that you have contraints how you want them. You can limit vertical movement but you can also limit twists/rotations. Youll be more interested in the twists rotations to make sure they're limited to whichever motion you want. You might also get another issue if you run into the error where your constraint seems to be springing slightly when resting so that's an example of when you'd need to turn the spring setting off as well. These last two things can be found underneath the physics asset and whichever constraint you're hoping to work on in that moment.

[@bluethumbbuttoneek9465]

Also what's the purpose of the uv projecting part

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Bluethumbbutton Eek if you don't UV-unwrap a mesh Unreal will not know how to put a material on it. It will look fine when you first import it, but then it will turn completely black.

[@bluethumbbuttoneek9465]

@@marcoghislanzoni ah yeah ok was just wondering since it had nothing to do with the object interaction I know what uvs are for just didn't know what it had to do for this objective 😅

[@YunaQQQQQ8]

Can you please just upload a rigged lantern alone please? I've tried doing this now with both Blender and Maya but doesn't get anywhere. In Maya the bones deforms the lantern like crazy and in Blender the Vertex Group doesn't even show the bones. I've been sitting like 30-60 mins now just going back n forth between programs and attempts and videos. The headache and irritation over these programs is reaching its point. Can you help me out?

[@digitalillusioncalo]

Very Nice! I have a question: When I enable Post Processing Effects/Lights/Textures I lose a lot of FPS and the hands have a low tracking quality, how can I fix it? Thank you!!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Hi there. These are very demanding features to use in VR, you should be careful with them. If the system cannot keep up with the optimal FPS, everything will slow down, including your tracking that will become jittery. Look through the UE4 documentation, there is a whole section on how to optimise for VR (i.e. turn off screen space effects, use the forward rendered, stereo instancing etc.)

[@digitalillusioncalo]

Marco Ghislanzoni Ciao Marco non avevo notato fossi italiano, innanzitutto complimenti per le ottime guide e per la condivisione, tornando al punto ho letto la documentazione ma non ho trovato fix, ho cercato la stringa screen percentage nel file defaultengine.ini ma non l'ho trovata. Grazie ancora!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Ciao Paolo, grazie per l'apprezzamento. Questo e' il link di cui ti dicevo: docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Platforms/VR/ContentSetup . E' anche importante misurare dove si verifica il calo delle performance, se lato GPU (GPU bound) o lato CPU (CPU bound). Questo e' un riferimento utile in proposito: docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Platforms/VR/Profiling . Se vuoi posta i tuoi problemi sul Forum VR/AR di Unreal oppure su Discord #vr-ar. Li' mi e' piu' facile offrire aiuto che qui su KZbin dove non si possono postare progetti, immagini, etc. A presto.

[@digitalillusioncalo]

è possibile avere un invito per discord?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Non credo serva un invito. Basta iscriversi discordapp.com/register collegarsi al server Unreal Slackers.

[@k1qu344]

I cant manage to make it work, i've followed all the steps and it seems like my object is simulating physics at all times preventing me to pick it up. Do you think it is because my object has a cloth component to it attach to one of the bones?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Enrique De la Garza It is hard to tell without seeing your object and testing it out. It could be. Try to remove the cloth and see if it works without, then you know. Can you turn off collisions for the cloth?

[@M4v3RicK99]

hey, do you know how I'd be able to make the hands snap to the object upon interaction? (In this case, grab only the top handle of the lamp v/s being able to grab any part of it while also having the hand model snap to place around the grip.

[@marcoghislanzoni]

M4v3RicK99 You can create a socket on the hand skeletal mesh and have the lamp snap to it when you grab it.

[@jacquesachille7365]

And subbed!

[@MeriapipFriendsProductions23]

i tried to keep up in maya but found the rigging hard; are you confident in maya to produce the same tutorial but in maya at all?

[@marcoghislanzoni]

I am not very familiar with Maya, but it works pretty much in the same way. As long as you can rig a couple of joints, you should be able to reproduce the example in the tutorial. This could be a good reference for you to get started with a simple rig in Maya: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eXeWo6imn76Kl5Y

[@DanielMaxSteinberg]

Your videos have been super helpful for me. Thanks for the great tutorials! I'm trying to figure out how to do something similar to this for my own project with a more complicated model (a book, from this tutorial: kzbin.info/www/bejne/m3OsqZajYrlmhdE), and would love if you have tips for that. Is there a way to build the more complicated restraints/deformations in UE4, or can you bring them in from Blender somehow?

[@macko5000]

Hey dude, awesome stuff! I just wondering can you make a tutorial with something that i want to create. Im trying and trying and it doesnt work. I will send you money via paypal and i will describe everything in detail but i think its not so hard so you will spend a few hours only - i think but may i be wrong. If you are interested to make some new year cash and help young future game devs it would be awesome :D cheers man! And happy new year! best wishes!

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Hey, send me a private message here on KZbin (it's in the About tab) let's see if I can help you out or at least point you in the right direction.

[@bluethumbbuttoneek9465]

And why do you not talk? Or atleast throw a like Alexa type of robot auto speech voice over..

[@marcoghislanzoni]

Because this is my style of tutorials and I have chosen to have no voice track so you can listen to your favourite music while watching them.

[@bluethumbbuttoneek9465]

@@marcoghislanzoni I could turn off the videos volume if I wanted to play music while trying to learn something. Verbal and demonstration is best way for me to learn reading then rewinding/pausing is more tedious

[@bluethumbbuttoneek9465]

@@marcoghislanzoni happy u replied to an older video comment not many do this