Quick Start

Last updated: Feb 15th, 2021

Download

The Flying Navigation System plugin can be found on the Unreal Engine Marketplace. It can be downloaded and installed from the Library tab of the Epic Games Launcher.

Download the Flying Navigation System

Quickstart Guide


In order for 3D pathfinding to work, an octree needs to be created in the level. It is used by the pathfinding algorithm to navigate around obstacles.


Part 1: Creating the Octree

Step 1

Once the plugin is downloaded to your engine version, create a Flying template project.

Create a Flying template project

Make sure to enable the plugin (Under Navigation) in the Plugins window and restart the editor.

Enable from plugin window
Step 2

Head over to Project Settings, then Engine/Navigation System. Now we want to create at least one Navigation Agent. Here two have been created, one that uses the Flying Navigation System and another that uses the standard Recast Navmesh system. Which system the agent uses is dependent on the Preferred Nav Data property.

  1. Set an Agent to FlyingNavigationData to make it use the Flying Navigation System
  2. Set an Agent to RecastNavMesh to make it use the default UE4 navigation.

You can also change the colour to distinguish the two, which is reflected in the debug display. For this quickstart, we won’t use the Recast agent.

IMPORTANT

Also make sure to set the Navigation/Default Agent Name to a valid name or None. Pathfinding requests will sometimes fail if an invalid name is set.

Create a flying navigation agent in the project settings

Nav Data Class vs Preferred Nav Data

The Nav Data Class property is legacy, but setting it will automatically set Preferred Nav Data to the same value. The pathfinding method is only determined by Preferred Nav Data.

You should also note the Nav Agent Radius property, as this will become useful later.

Step 3

Once the Supported Agents are set up, you can add a standard Nav Mesh Bounds Volume from the side panel.

Add a Nav Mesh Bounds volume to the level

At this point you should see a FlyingNavigationData-FlyingAgent or similar actor spawned in your level. If you also created a Recast agent you should also see a RecastNavMesh-RecastAgent or similar actor.

Make sure a Flying navigation data actor appears in the level.

If you can't find it:

You may be required to reload the level after placing the bounds volume to trigger the Navigation Actor spawn.
If you still don’t see the actor, make sure that FlyingAgent is checked under
WorldSettings/World/NavigationSystemConfig/SupportedAgentsMask
and
NavMeshBoundsVolume/Navigation/SupportedAgents.

Step 4

You can now scale the bounds volume to fit your scene. For the FlyingExampleMap, that looks like this:

Scale and move the nav mesh bounds volume to fit the scene

Generating Octrees in Levels

The Flying Navigation System will generate one Octree structure in the world, which is required to be a cube. This cube is calculated from the largest edge of the sum of the Nav Mesh Bounds Volumes. (The sum of boxes is a larger box that encapsulates both).
However, the building algorithm only takes meshes into account that are inside Nav Mesh Bounds Volumes (as well as some other optimisations). The Octree cube centre is calculated from the centre of the sum of the Nav Mesh Bounds Volumes, so it can be useful to scale up and move the volume to make the best use of the flying space.

Step 5

Select the FlyingNavigationData actor, and click Rebuild Navigation Data (Or click Build/Build Paths in the toolbar). Make sure Enable Drawing and Show/Navigation in the viewport (press P) are both checked, and you should get something like this:

The blocked voxels are displayed
Step 6

We’re not quite finished yet: you might notice that the player spaceship is being treated as a blocking mesh. This will be problematic for the pathfinding, as the destination point (the spaceship) will be inside a blocked area.

Spaceship causes blocked voxels

To fix this, disable Collision/Can Ever Affect Navigation on the Flying Pawn's mesh:

Uncheck Can Ever Affect Navigation under the Collision category on the static mesh

Rebuild the Octree, and everything should be good to go.

Congratulations!

You’ve set up your first octree!

Part 2: Building a flying AI

This is a basic UE4 AI setup; there are lots of AI programming tutorials on YouTube, such as this one. Our AI will follow the player wherever they go.

Step 7

Create a new AIController Blueprint (you'll need to search for it under All Classes) called AIC_FollowingController.
Create a new Blackboard asset (Right Click -> Artificial Intelligence) called BB_FollowingPawn.
Create a new Pawn Blueprint called BP_FollowingPawn.
Create a new Behavior Tree asset (Right Click -> Artificial Intelligence) called BT_FollowingBehavior.

A folder containing the required AI assets

Add a few static mesh components to the BP_FollowingPawn to make it look interesting. Make sure to disable Collision/Can Ever Affect Navigation on each mesh.

Uncheck Can Ever Affect Navigation under the Collision category on each static mesh on the pawn
Step 8

Add a FloatingPawnMovement component. All pawns require some kind of movement component to participate in navigation. This could be the CharacterMovementComponent in the Character class.
The movement component settings (Nav Movement/Movement Capabilities) define which navigation system your agent should use:

Set Preferred Nav Data in the Movement Component Settings

Can Crouch etc. checkboxes

The Can Crouch, Can Walk, Can Fly etc. checkboxes are only used by CharacterMovementComponent and will not impact how this pawn behaves.
However, the other options are used for determining which navigation data to use if you have set up multiple agents with the same Preferred Nav Data in Project Settings. Please see here for more info.

Step 9

Add a TargetActor Object value to the blackboard, with Actor as the Base Class.

Add a target actor variable to the blackboard.

In AIC_FollowingController, set up the blackboard, set the TargetActor property and run the behavior tree in the BeginPlay event. To set the player pawn to TargetActor, use the Set Value as Object node with a string literal in the key name (in this case TargetActor).

Set up the blackboard with the player pawn as the target actor
Blueprint Code
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   FunctionReference=(MemberName="UseBlackboard",bSelfContext=True)
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End Object
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End Object
Begin Object Class=/Script/BlueprintGraph.K2Node_CallFunction Name="K2Node_CallFunction_1"
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End Object
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End Object
Begin Object Class=/Script/BlueprintGraph.K2Node_CallFunction Name="K2Node_CallFunction_2"
   bIsPureFunc=True
   FunctionReference=(MemberParent=Class'"/Script/Engine.GameplayStatics"',MemberName="GetPlayerPawn")
   NodePosX=528
   NodePosY=256
   NodeGuid=220F21E7440E10118B7DE59F55DCEF8B
   CustomProperties Pin (PinId=8C571B5B4A15705CC8904F8E4567517D,PinName="self",PinFriendlyName=NSLOCTEXT("K2Node", "Target", "Target"),PinType.PinCategory="object",PinType.PinSubCategory="",PinType.PinSubCategoryObject=Class'"/Script/Engine.GameplayStatics"',PinType.PinSubCategoryMemberReference=(),PinType.PinValueType=(),PinType.ContainerType=None,PinType.bIsReference=False,PinType.bIsConst=False,PinType.bIsWeakPointer=False,DefaultObject="/Script/Engine.Default__GameplayStatics",PersistentGuid=00000000000000000000000000000000,bHidden=True,bNotConnectable=False,bDefaultValueIsReadOnly=False,bDefaultValueIsIgnored=False,bAdvancedView=False,bOrphanedPin=False,)
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End Object
Begin Object Class=/Script/BlueprintGraph.K2Node_CallFunction Name="K2Node_CallFunction_3"
   bIsPureFunc=True
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End Object
Begin Object Class=/Script/BlueprintGraph.K2Node_CallFunction Name="K2Node_CallFunction_4"
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End Object
Step 10

In BP_FollowingPawn, set Pawn/AI Controller Class to AIC_FollowingController. Also, set the Use Controller Rotation * checkboxes, so that the pawn rotates to follow the path.

Attach AI controller to pawn
Step 11

The only thing left is to fill in the BT_FollowingBehavior behavior tree. First, set the Blackboard Asset to BB_FollowingPawn.

Set the Blackboard Asset to BB_FollowingPawn

Create a Sequence, then a Wait node and a Move To node.

Create a Sequence, then a Wait node and a Move To node in the behaviour tree

The Move To Behavior Tree Node

That’s right, the Flying Navigation System uses the same Move To node as standard nav walking!
Which system the node uses to find a path is determined by MovementComponent settings of the Pawn it is controlling
(Nav Movement/Movement Capabilities). We changed this earlier in our BP_FollowingPawn.

It’s highly recommended that you turn off Allow Partial Path on the Move To node, to prevent searching the whole world if the target is inaccessible. The pathfinding algorithm will try to guess the closest point to the target if it’s in a blocked area.

Turn off Allow Partial path on the Move To node

IMPORTANT

The behaviour tree node does not use async pathfinding (at the moment, updates are planned), which means it should only be used with simple scenes or pathfinding speed optimisations.

Step 12

Drag your BP_FollowingPawn into your level, press play and give it a go! Our following pawn should follow you around the level, even underneath the floor!

Playing the flying quickstart level

Debug path drawing

You can see the path the AI calculates by enabling Draw Debug Paths on the FlyingNavigationData actor in the level.

Step 13

It can be rather difficult to see what the AI was actually doing in the flying simulator, so you can delete the FlyingPawn from the template level and add a DefaultPawn (Search DefaultPawn under Engine C++ Classes).

Finding the default pawn class in the engine c++ classed folder

If you set Auto Possess Player to Player 0 and bump up the Max Speed on the DefaultPawn, you can give the AI a run for its money.

Set auto possesses player to player 0 and increase the max speed to 6000 on the default pawn

Congratulations!

You've successfully created your first flying agent!

Where to next?


For more details on the Flying Navigation System, check out the usage page.
If you have problems, check out the troubleshooting page.

If you like the Flying Navigation System

Please consider leaving a review on the Unreal Marketplace

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Thank you for your support

Ben Sutherland