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Configuring your pawn set

What is a Pawn Set?

Your pawn set is responsible for determining what "physical representation" your character has at different rendering "LOD Levels" (what we call "Render Targets"). In most cases, this means configuring the Actor that is used when the player is nearby, and the configuration of the "crowd" (see Crowd Rendering) used for distant actors.

More details on these "Render Targets" in Morpheus Render Targets

A demonstration of the difference between render targets. In this example, there are 3 characters in the world (so 3 BPM_M2Example_PlayerCharacters), but only 2 render target actors (BP_M2Example_PlayerCharacter). This because we have set the "NumInLOD0" to 1, meaning that other than yourself, only one other character will be a render target actor, and any past that point will be represented in the crowd.

The following image is of our default pawn set: DA_Pawns. The main things to bear in mind here are:

  • OverrideAuthPawnClass: If this is set, your local character will use this class as the Pawn. If no override is set, then the asset will fall back to using the DefaultPawnClass defined by your active Game Mode.

  • OverrideActorClass: Similar to the above, but for nearby (LOD0) characters. Either this class, or the default pawn, will be used as the physical representation of other players near to you in the world

  • Crowd Data: If you are not running smaller experiences (i.e. around 30 players or fewer), this will be needed to configure the distant actors (the crowd). This can largely be left as the default, except for a few conditions, discussed below in Modifying your Crowd Data

(more details in Pawn Sets)

The Pawn Class

Like in traditional Unreal projects, we use the Pawn class to represent most players. As mentioned above, the main difference is that for remote characters, we switch between these Render Target Actors, and a "crowd" representation.

We use the pawn class for handling game logic that requires a physical in-game body, e.g. collision or moving the actor through the game world (any networked state needs to be sent through the Morpheus Actor).

If you are using the Morpheus Base Project, BP_Example_PlayerCharacter has been made for you.

We require your main character to extend from M2_CharacterBase at the minimum (a child of Character). This is to handle some of our core functionality, such as Actor Poolingand handling custom avatars' Capsules and Mesh Transforms. If you are using making other Morpheus Actor render targets, you can go directly from Actor or below.

Some important things to note regarding using pawns on the Morpheus Platform

  • We do not advise modifying your SkeletalMeshAsset to set your character's visuals. Instead, we use an interoperable avatar system (See Avatars). To configure your character's model, see Updating your character avatar

  • The Anim Class can be modified, but has some caveats:

    • Animations require some specialise techniques to be compliant with the Animated Crowd. See Crowd Animation

    • The Anim Class should match the one used by your animated crowd: See Modifying your Crowd Data

    • Our custom avatar setup requires a specific skeleton to be used (SKEL_UE5Mannequin), so this should not be changed if you want to be compatible with our custom avatars.

    • For these reasons, if you do want to change your animations, we recommend duplicating ABP_M2_Human, and using it as a starting point.

Modifying your Crowd Data

The default DA_SkeletalCrowdData_LoD1 should be fine for most use cases. Regarding the current properties, and the conditions in which they could be changed:

  • Skeleton: We advise leaving this unchanged.

  • CrowdAnimInstance: This should be changed if you change the Anim Class used by your pawn. It doesn't have to match, but generally makes the most sense to match, to ensure animations are consistent.

  • AnimNameToSequence: This is a mapping of animation montages that can run on the animated crowd. The can be triggered via e.g. JM_MontageComponent::PlayMontageByName(MontageName). If you want to add montages that you expect to play on the crowd, they will need to be added here.

  • NumCustomDataFloats/NumCustomDataFloatsPerMesh: Intended only for specialist use. We advise leaving these unchanged.

How do you apply a Pawn Set?

  • There is the following helper function that can be called on your Morpheus Actor: ApplyPawnSet.

    • This will apply the config above to your local Morpheus Actor, providing e.g. the right auth pawn, LOD0 render target actor, and crowd details.

    • As mentioned above, if the "Override" fields are left blank, it will instead set to the DefaultPawnClass provided in your Game Mode (see Setting up your Game Mode)

    • NOTE: This operation is only done locally, so ApplyPawnSet will need to be called on every machine.

  • We also have a Default Pawn Set, defined in your project settings.

    • This can be obtained via the GetDefaultPawnSet helper function. (It returns a soft asset reference, so will need to be loaded via e.g. JunoAsyncLoadAsset).

This is done already for you in BPM_Example_PlayerCharacter, due to the following logic in the parent class: BPM_M2Example_PlayerCharacter:

Our example/default behavior: at the start of the game, every character (on every machine), loads the default pawn set, and applies it to themselves. Our default pawn set (DA_Pawns) has no override classes. This will therefore set them up to use the default pawn from the game mode.

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