Unreal Engine Buoyancy - Making a Boat Float in UE 5.3

[@pyotrvasechkin4620]

Thank you very much for the video, can you make a tutorial on how to create a steerable boat?

[@lapharao]

If someone is stuck and the boat isn’t floating. at buoyancy, check the “Auto Activate” check box under the Activation tab. I assume, for some reason, the newer versions of UE disable it by default. Also, thanks for the video, really helped me a lot!

[@ori0707]

It works when I check auto-activation or check mass (kg) in physics. Thank you for your answer :)

[@vinniakp665]

Thanks so much! Been stuck for an hour because I didn't know why my boat flipped around like crazy, and your video is a life saver!

[@John_atCTS]

Thanks. Yes, would definitely like to see how to mask out the water from the boat.

[@peanut_games]

uploading in like an hour

[@borisaceski6401]

Lovely video mate! Would love too see a masking solutionfor the water inside the boat.

[@edh3268]

If using 5.5 when you turn on the plugins for water, you'll probably get an error when on restart that will tell you that you need to add WaterBodyCollision to the INI file. Just click the link in the error log and it will automatically be added. Then you will see WaterBodyCollision show up as a preset option.

[@LunakoRayner-nx3lj]

Thank you so much for this!!

[@peanut_games]

I'm glad, thanks for watching :)

[@Fer14512315]

thanks heaps mate, helped a lot!!!

[@WrathInteractive]

Thanks for this, really helpful.

[@LAYATORS]

Did everything as you but my boat never stabilizes, it always floats on the top and all the other points seem to not work at all. PLS help my deadline is soon

[@cewok9068]

I don't have the option WaterBodyCollision in the collision presets for some reason

[@cewok9068]

NVM, I just had to add the entry to the DefaultEngine.ini. The engine tells you that when you open it

[@peanut_games]

Make sure all the water plugins are activated and restart the editor

[@yotube....]

yes please, one to take out the water off the object

[@BPGames]

Best info, thanks! What needs to be done to prevent the boat from sinking under the character?

[@peanut_games]

If it's just once you get in, uncheck Weld Simulated Bodies from the Attach node. This combines the player's weight and can make it sink, or increase buoyancy strength.

[@BPGames]

@@peanut_games Thanks for the quick response. The problem was in the conflict of the character's body physics since I have implemented interaction with the character's body physical actors. I solved this by creating a custom collision preset for the boat mesh.

[@ToadieBog]

Nice video. It would be neat to see how to not show water inside the boat, any ideas?

[@peanut_games]

Yeah that's the next one kzbin.info/www/bejne/iaWUdWyag7Rlfbc

[@King_Ghanem]

can you make tutorial how to make character get out of boat..?

[@facelessgoff4323]

do you have a discord as my boat the back of it just sinks while the front is more then enough

[@Jordan-Tech]

thanks good video !

[@Cashislit]

i dont see any water body collision option for the collision presets HELP PLEASE

[@peanut_games]

when you restart the editor it should give a message with an option to create it

[@ohlawdy6855]

Very clear instructions, thank you! Is this the same principal for big and small objects? Would you need more pontoons depending on how large the object is? I had tried this with a very large object, and maybe I need to fiddle with numbers but it would still slowly sink into the water, even on the lightest value

[@peanut_games]

Pontoons are mostly for stability, if you want your objects to maintain orientation like a boat. Depends on the shape of the object, for a barrel I'd use 2 and for a ball I'd only use one so it can rotate in all directions. Buoyancy strength is mostly changed with "Buoyancy Coefficient" although it is applied to each pontoon

[@ohlawdy6855]

@@peanut_games Gotcha! For the record I was trying it with a larger sized boat, like a cruise ship or cargo ship model, and I had followed principles for a smaller boat like this one, which wasn't translating quite right.

[@sean3e]

how did you get the debugger view for pontoons to open?

[@MustafaDagdelen]

do u find it ?

[@dangerousmindgames]

My boat with everything set up identically sinks like a stone. Any idea why it works for the example cube but not anything else?

[@peanut_games]

It's possible the mass is auto calculated way too high for the strength of buoyancy.

[@UnTouchedByTime77]

i had the same issue. i fixed it by attaching the static mesh to the default scene root in the BP actor page. i missed that when watching the video

[@ScoutOW2]

Im having a reaaally confusing bug happen. The second it touches the water, the front of the boat gets launched into the ground, then the back of the boat floats up (mostly by 1 of the points), while the front is rubbing against the floor. All points are placed evenly across the boat just like yours.

[@mmmmmmm2959]

same issue

[@LAYATORS]

Did you manage to fix it?

[@ScoutOW2]

@LAYATORS i did not, i pretty much just have up on the project

[@UAKrogan]

Hello, what is a "Apply Downstream Angular Rotation" maybe boat can be rotated to the flow direction?

[@Parsifal308]

I have two ships, in one I managed to configure it correctly, but when I want to create another blueprint in the same way but with a different mesh (more complex), there is no way to prevent it from turning around.

[@Arbvid]

is there a reason why your Y is forward and not X, if i use a boat facing forward with X the things acts very strange buggy

[@peanut_games]

Yeah idk if I talked about it in this video but the actual boat mesh doesn't face forward, that shouldn't affect buoyancy though?

[@smokeNghost86]

great content, exactly what i needed. im curious though how you might make the boat sink in game? I'm making a pirate ship game and I want my ships to take on water when they get shot. i figured i can simulate that by doing what you're doing and somehow link the buoyancy to the ships health, the lower the health and add a water effect for cannon balls that show below the water line. but im curious to know how you would approach it because im trying to find things on youtube about sinking ships but i just find them on floating.

[@peanut_games]

Thanks! That sounds like a good start to me. Once the boat 'dies' set the buoyancy just low enough that it slowly sinks then for optimization disable physics once it reaches a certain depth/destroy it. Take a look at the next video too if you haven't. With that method you can toggle the visibility of the water mask mesh to dynamically show/hide the water inside the boat.

[@hocinetazani6364]

Thank You

[@hariom404-u6c]

Bro thanks for this but is it possible to add this on custom material shader (a plane with a simple water material)

[@peanut_games]

Ah you could use water body custom which uses a plane, but you gotta do a workaround to get buoyancy to work. To get buoyancy to work with water body custom, the water mesh has to be a solid cube, with the pivot point at the surface. This is what I was mentioning at the end of the first water video

[@zeon3d755]

can you show how to use sail and clip out the water or redirect to another tutorial or docs

[@peanut_games]

Yes I have both of those in this playlist kzbin.info/aero/PLJUbZgHL1TY39pciuN8W07BJy7jAubtNn

[@zeon3d755]

@@peanut_games thanks

[@johnd9008]

I don't see PONTOONS and BUOYANCY anymore in 5.5... Is it now "FLOAT"?

[@peanut_games]

It's still there for me. Maybe you have to enable the buoyancy plugin, but I disabled it and I still have the buoyancy component.

[@sunnysomebuddy5511]

I might need support here, no matter what I do, my Unreal does not find Buoyancy. I restarted, I searched for plugins, googled, yet I do not find a solution. Do you have an idea what it could be?

[@peanut_games]

that's strange, it should be included with the water plugin

[@MIST3HH]

the Buoyancy Cube and component did not show for me either. In content browser, hit the "Settings" option in the right hand side. and enable "Show Plugin Content". Should show up now!

[@astralstormgamestudios1259]

Thank you!

[@BodoppelnCrawick]

I love your boat series so far and i hope there is more content coming from you. You have a great way of explaining things. I Love how you give insight to the UE5 Documentations too and it feels like you're doing things like they are supossed to. I've noticed that my Boat Mesh from a Free UE marketplace asset is not behaving like the BP_Buoyancy_Example Cube. The Cube falls down immediatly when pressing Play, but the Free Boat Mesh that i use just stays where I placed it without falling down. I get the Error Message "trying to Simulate Physics on "BP_Boat_C_1.StaticMesh" But it has ComplexAsSimple Colission". I guess the problem is with the Free UE5 Boat Mesh that i use. maybe somewhere in the settings? Any Idea? Thanks alot!

[@peanut_games]

I appreciate the kind words! To be honest I don't have a concrete follow-up video decided as this seems to be completed, maybe swimming or a look at what I've been working on personally. Let me know what else you'd like to see! As for that message you're getting, yes it's a setting in the mesh itself and it's called "Collision Complexity", for simulation it must use simple collision. Setting it to project default should work.

[@BodoppelnCrawick]

@@peanut_games Changing the Mesh Settings into Project Default worked like a charm. Thank you very much. As for another content idea I'd suggest Combat Mechanics, like Shooting out of the Boat etc. or Getting water effects caused by the boats movement, so it appears more natural when you're driving the boat and it causes a "footprint" stain. Excuse my english :D. Introducing a interactable Wheel you can drive the boat with would also be cool. I really appreciate your commitment. This type of content is really highly in demand and I hope you can make it big!

[@BodoppelnCrawick]

@@peanut_games Just had an Idea: If a boat DOES flip over and is upside down in the water, make it either IMPOSSIBLE for the boat to flip over, OR if its upside down in the water or sth, make it automatically go back upright again so the Boat is always in a good position on Water. Sometimes by slightly touching the boat too much it can flip over too hard. Also, i highly recommend setting up a Discord Server for this KZbin Channel.

[@peanut_games]

@@BodoppelnCrawick Yeah I could make like a polishing the boat video, with a bunch of little things to make it more game ready. I've gotten a couple discord mentions before so I have been thinking about it

[@betraid]

I have waterbodycollision as collision preset on my water body ocean, but this buoyancy cube is not reacting to it, it just falls through

[@peanut_games]

Is the cube above the water before starting? It can't be overlapping at all

[@betraid]

@@peanut_games yes it is above the water, dunno why it isn't working😅 when i did it on my boat, it worked, but doing strange movements, looks like it needs ton of tweaks and time. I just was looking for way to animate boats for my open world level, nothing fancy, just floating simulation on same place.

[@peanut_games]

@@betraid linear and angular dampening are probably the most relevant as they set resistance to movement, so if it's acting crazy I'd star there. The locations of pontoons is important too, spread them out more to stabilize. Doesn't make sense why the demo cube isn't floating though, it should work as they provide it as long as the water has the right collision profile. Maybe this is stupid but make sure the WaterBodyCollision profile is actually set to overlap the desired objects, and that your objects have Generate Overlap Events ticked.

[@betraid]

@@peanut_games it could be some bug maybe, since i have pretty large water body ocean, covering large island 15k actors in total:D

[@muralist1]

Didn't know the WaterBodyCustom was "kind of broken," thought it was something I did. What are the issues with it and how can we overcome them? Is there a better way to get a large ocean? I have a large terrain model with islands and have the WaterBodyCustom set up as my ocean, but I've had some trouble.

[@peanut_games]

Yeah I'd definitely reserve water body custom for only pools, puddles, etc. Large ocean is what water body ocean is for! The collision on the water body custom plane is completely broken, which means so is buoyancy. You have to manually change the water mesh to a cube with the pivot *at the surface* for it to work, and even then the post process didn't seem to work at all. So yeah just use ocean, lake, and river with overwhelming preference. If you want no islands just uncheck affects landscape and set all the land spline points at 0 in the SplineComp in the WaterBodyOcean details.

[@muralist1]

@@peanut_games Okay, I'll change over to Ocean. I think originally I tried that but it deformed my real world terrain, as in wrecked it. I don't want any islands nor landscape deformation, just water to fill my terrain which already has islands. If I set all the land spline points to 0 in the SplineComp will it do that?

[@peanut_games]

@@muralist1 The "Affects Landscape" flag prevents it from changing landscape, but that leaves a hole in the center where the default island would be - so setting the spline points to exactly 0 fills that hole thus making it clean near infinite ocean.

[@muralist1]

@@peanut_games Did both of those and now its just ocean and my terrain. Thanks!

[@peanut_games]

@@muralist1 awesome no problem

[@Hyzoka1]

not working, bouyancy debug command not working either

[@dorklord1078]

It's not helpful that you didn't show how you're "adding" additional buoyancy points just by moving the scene component. It's clear you're inputting the values based on the transform location but you didn't explain or properly show how you're adding those points. Is it automatic? A feeling? And my boat is aggressively bouncing along the water by being nose down so what am I supposed to adjust?

[@peanut_games]

Click on the buoyancy component. It's in the details tab, in a secondary drop down menu

[@unrealversum7729]

yes please, no water in boat

[@enestas7791]

Damn it, it's not working. I did everything you said I'm going crazy, but the cube doesn't float in the water, it just sinks, as if the water doesn't exist.

[@peanut_games]

make sure the water actor collision is set to 'waterbodycollision'

[@MarkAMensah]

@@peanut_games i did but but the boat still sinks

[@10MinuteEditing]

It's floating, but I can't animate it.

[@shiatai7563]

Is there a way to make a section of displacement with a sequence while simulating buoyancy?🥲