Car Velocity
I used a custom curve in Unreal’s Timeline node to plot the distance an individual car would travel in a given time. Therefore, the gradient of this curve was lower when cars were in a station and higher when they were at their top speed between stations.
To demonstrate how passengers board and alight from cable cars I used a third person MetaHuman character. I also had to ensure the collisions on the cars were setup correctly, this was done by using Complex Collision as Simple for the cars’ static mesh.
Fly Through
To enable cars to spread out when between stations, but group together when inside stations, I assigned new start times on the animation curve for each car; I did this using the “Set New Time” node. The system then has ‘N’ cars placed at varying points in time on the global animation curve.
Cable Car System
This clip is a re-creation of a cable car system I developed for a project that is currently under NDA. The system was created using Unreal Engine’s Blueprints and is designed to transport users between three locations inside a large resort. It should also have as much flexibility as possible.
Cable car speed, the offset between cars and the heights of the cars are all public variables meaning they can be easily adjusted to the project’s requirements.
The system became more complex when I wrote the functionality for the cars to decelerate and accelerate such that their offset would decrease in the stations, but then increase when leaving the stations.
System Variables
The system has 4 public variables for the user to configure their desired system. The first variable controls the global speed of every car; if slower speeds are required this can be reduced. The offset is also customisable; if the system is computationally too heavy then a greater offset will spawn fewer cars on the system, increasing frame rate.
The opening and closing speed of the doors are also changeable, as well as car height. The height can be tuned such that the car aligns with the cable.
These variables have been added such that the system can be re-used on different projects with minimal re-configuration time needed.
Timeline Curves
By plotting the distance over time I had precise control over the location where the cars accelerated and decelerated such that they aligned with the stations.
I also used a stepped line graph to trigger a signal for the doors to be opened or closed according to the cars’ location on the spline. For safety reasons, I needed to ensure that doors would close slightly before exiting each station and slightly after arriving into each station. This is why the step changes in the second graph are offset when compared to the gradient changes in the first graph.