I have a nice trail renderer which moves steadly towards some other GameObjects and I need to know when the renderer "gets" to one of these GameObjects.
I've been looking around and it seems that, leaving aside the code controlling the collision itself, I need to:
1) Create a Collider (BoxCollider, for instance).
2) Attach to it a RigidBody, because moving the transform of the collider is not the best thing in terms of performance.
3) Apply a force to the RigidBody to make it move towards the objectives.
Overall, it seems like an overly complex setup to make if one object has just collided with another one, as I don't really it to do anything with physics (The ray won't bounce, nor come back, its all controlled by code).
Am I missing something or this is the only approach to this situation available on Unity?
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I'm looking for a little newbie advice on gamedev strategy and/or approach. I'm working on a game that uses Rigidbody physics in Unity and I've got a character interacting nicely with physical objects in the game world. The thing I'm trying to work through is that there are certain physical interactions that I want to control, but my own attempts to control them are conflicting with what Unity is already (correctly) doing.
For simplicity, let's just say I've got a Rigidbody-based player, and when certain Rigidbody-based objects collide with that player, I want to override where they deflect to. When I detect the collision and apply my own force with rb.AddForce(myForceVector, ForceMode.VelocityChange), Unity is also applying it's own force as a result of the same collision. I also tried setting the velocity directly with rb.velocity = myForceVector, which mostly works, but there are still situations where Unity applies force after I set the velocity so it's glitchy at best.
Other options I've considered are:
Use an additional, larger IsTrigger collision mesh to detect and handler the special type of collision I'm looking for before the actual collision occurs. That might work for slower speed projectiles, but likely will have the same issue for faster collisions.
Change the player to not being Rigidbody-based, which might work, but would require me to code a lot of the other interactions that are already working out of the box with Rigidbody physics.
Use RayCasting to detect when these special collisions might occur next and handle them before the actual collision. This is where I'm leaning currently.
Anyone have a recommended best practice for this kind of thing?
Thanks in advance!
The easiest way might just be to take full control. On the correctly timed press, disable the RigidBody and the Collider. Then just move it yourself to the target location. It's really hard to get precise control over a RigidBody -- every FixedUpdate(), it might be picking up force from collisions, and there can be many FixedUpdate() calls between Update() calls.
You could write a pretty simple coroutine using a Lerp() or Slerp() between the object's current and target position. That way, you could fully control how the object moves toward its target.
Just to follow up... I attempted to "take full control" as suggested in Alex M's answer above, but that ended up making a number of other things complicated in my specific situation. However, his comments about disabling the collider in the original question led me down a different path that ended up working well...
I ended up disabling the collider for the deflecting rigidbody upon impact and setting the velocity of the deflected body directly. That way, I was able to avoiding any additional force(s) applied from Unity while the collision was active. Once the deflected object was on it's way, I just had to reenable the collider.
Thanks, Alex!
I am trying to make some kind of simulation program with Unity. The simulation includes a missile launched from an aircraft and a terrain.
I get the coordinate data required for the movement of the missile from another program using a socket connection.
I created an explosion effect for the missile to explode as soon as the missile and the terrain collided. But the explosion effect is not triggered in any way.
I used the OnCollisionEnter() method to detect the collision, but this method does not seem to work.
The missile has its own rigidbody and collider and The terrain has Terrain Collider, but still no collision is detected and the missile passes through the terrain.
What could be the cause of this error?
EDIT :
I thank everyone for their help, but none of the solutions worked. I solved the error using the OnTriggerEnter method. For this, I also had to enlarge the object's collider a little more.
As mentioned in the comment section above (I dont have enough rep to contribute to the discussion but will provide a solution), you need to enable continuous collision detection. Once you have done that we can move onto the next step.
It is generally bad practice to interact with rigidbodies in update and it can lead to all sorts of strange bugs so I wouldn't recommend it. That being said I dont think it's the cause of your issues. As #HumanWrites mentioned, you are manually moving the position each frame which causes your missile to never actually collide with your mesh. the solution to this is:
rb.MovePosition(Vector3.MoveTowards(...))
The reason for this is that by using the method on the rigidbody, you inform the physics engine that you want to move from one position to the other and you would like the physics to take care of this instead of you doing it directly. This allows it to "sweep" between the current position and target position and detect any collisions that would have happened along the way.
Your missile is moving too fast to ever actually touch the mesh within a frame so you need to rely on the physics engine doing that sweep check.
I am working on a 2D game that involves many blocks that stack and collide on eachother and the player. I am currently using Rigidbody2D on the blocks for dynamic collisions but I am not a fan of how the dynamic physics include the "bounciness" in the elastic collisions. Also, there is an inherent push-force as well as other unfavorable push physics that are too "realistic".
I am wondering what is the best way to handle my predicament to remove the bounciness and push elements of the rigid bodies. I've tried adjusting the block's masses and bounciness physics but no luck. Is there a way to set them all as kinematic or disable these realistic effects somehow and still have them collide via rigidbodies? (Kinematic would be great if they were able to collide with each other) Or will I have to create some sort of raycast based block physics handling script? Or is there an even better solution to creating this very primitive physics structure that I am not seeing?
Thanks for any and all help!
The only way I could think of solving your problem, such that you have complete intuitive accuracy, is to write your own Rigidbody controller. Of course you can still reuse the Box colliders.
Once you've decided on a collision detection method and manifold generation working (raycasting maybe), this link details the impulse resolution you need.
I have a Unity project in which there is a 2D game world that consists of static colliders to make the geometry solid to the characters that inhabit it. The player is a dynamic collider (with a non-kinematic rigidbody). There's also an enemy character that is also a dynamic collider. Both characters walk over the floor and bump into walls like I'd expect them to.
What I want to achieve is that the player and enemy are not solid to each other, so they can move through each other. I achieved this by putting the enemy and the player on separate layers and setting the collision matrix so that these layers do not collide with each other. The problem I'm having now, however, is that I do want to detect whether or not the enemy and the player ran into each other. I added a trigger collider to the enemy character, it's on the enemy layer which means it doesn't detect collisions with the player.
I thought of making a sub-gameobject for the enemy, put it on the player's layer, add a rigidbody and trigger collider to it and use that to detect collisions between the player and the enemy, but it feels so convoluted that it leaves me wondering if there isn't a more elegant solution for this.
Edit (2020-05-26): Nowadays you can tell the engine to ignore collisions between two given objects. Kudos to Deepscorn for the comment. Will leave the rest of the answer unchanged, and read with that in mind.
Yes, you need to create a child GameObject, with a trigger collider, and put it in a layer that interacts with the player layer.
No, you don't need to add a Rigidbody to the new GameObject, the parent's rigidbody already makes it a dynamic collider, so you will get OnTrigger events.
As a side note, just to keep things organized, if you create a child of the enemy don't put it in the player layer. For example, in the future you might need to disable the player's layer collision with itself. Furthermore, if your player interacts this way with many objects, I'd put a single trigger on the player instead of the enemies, on a separate PlayerTrigger layer, just to keep things simple.
Isn't there a simpler way? Not really. You definitely need non-interaction between the player and enemy colliders, but some kind of interaction between them too. So one of them needs to span two layers, or the whole interaction would be described by a single bool. The physics engine processes lots of information in one go, so you can set all the layers and collisions you want, but during the physics loop you have no further control on what happens. You can't tell the engine to ignore collisions between just two objects. Having only 32 layers, and having them behave in the rigid way they do are actually heavy optimizations. If you are concerned about performance for creating another layer, disable interaction between layers you don't need, like the trigger layer and the floor and walls, or layers that don't even touch.
Your alternative is doing it all by code, which is even less elegant. A single child capsule on the player doesn't sound that bad now, doesn't it?
I am looking at tutorial where things are defined like this:
planes are sprites with dynamic physics bodies
plane moving is done with actions by following the path
there is contact detection between bullet and plane
bullet is sprite and it has physics body set to be static (which is little unusual in my opinion)
Here is the link to tutorial for more information.
Questions:
When we use actions to move physicsBodies is there a difference how we set body's dynamic property? Because bullet is static but still there is no problem for movement.
When we have situation like this, where we don't need collision detection, but just contact detection, and we can't move sprites (enemies) by applying forces or impulses, what is a good approach? Is this approach correct?
I think this is nice way, but I would like to be fully aware what is really happening when we use this method and are there any drawbacks or possible problems.
There are posts on SO that suggest we shouldn't use actions for moving dynamic physics bodies. I am aware that we can't use this approach in every case. For example this would not work for moving platform with other object on it, because there would be no correct physics simulation between body on the platform and platform moved by action. But in cases like from this tutorial, where we only need contact detection for object that can be moved only by actions (moved along path) I suppose it's not a problem ?
static means that the body isnt affected by physics. That doesnt mean it cant be manually repositioned or moved. So if something is set to static, it participates in the physics simulation, but it isnt affected by it. Think of a plane hitting a mountain. The plane is dynamic, the mountain is just going to sit there even though its participating in the physics. But you could still move that mountain around manually using a position or an action.
Not totally understanding your question, but I'll give it a shot.
You can move physicsBody's manually (using position property or actions), but you need to ask yourself why you're doing that. You typically don't want to do it because they're bypassing the physics simulation. If you're forcing it to move around, what's the point of using a physics body in the first place.. right?
But if your physicsbody is something like a powerup that is totally static, and you just want it to move around in a circle using an action then thats fine. You probably just want to use contact detection for the bullet, powerup, etc without actually moving it around using physics. Nothing wrong with that.