Actor Turn In Place

Important

Actor-Based Turn in Place (TIP) Solution. A superior substitute to Mesh-Based Turn in Place without the endless list of issues that comes with it.

Warning

Use git clone instead of downloading as a zip, or you will not receive content
Install this as a project plugin, not an engine plugin

Tip

Supports UE5.3+

Note

Read the Wiki for Instructions and Complete Features!
Showcase Video

Technique Comparison

Actor-Based TIP

Actor-Based TIP does not have any of the issues that come with Mesh-Based TIP. Read below for a detailed list.

We don't rotate the mesh, we simply use the existing functionality from ACharacter::FaceRotation() and UCharacterMovementComponent::PhysicsRotation() to store a TurnOffset on the UTurnInPlace Actor Component then apply it when we apply rotation to the Character. That's it!

This is my own solution that I developed from scratch because no adequate solution existed. This is released for free because it should become the industry standard for Unreal Engine Turn In Place.

Feature Rich

Multiplayer Ready: No extra steps required

Provides turn in place for the following movement types:

• ACharacter::bUseControllerRotationYaw for strafing movement used in shooters (Lyra uses this exclusively)
• UCharacterMovementComponent::bUseControllerDesiredRotation for strafing movement that interpolates smoothly
• UCharacterMovementComponent::bOrientRotationToMovement by turning towards the LastInputVector, which has been added to the Character Movement Component for you

Built with different stances in mind, allowing for different step sizes (e.g. 60, 90, 135) for different stances. But none of this is limited to stances, you can determine which AnimSet to use based on anything you like.

Handles increasing the turn rate when you reach the max turn angle, and also when you change directions mid-turn, e.g. playing left turn but now turning to the right, the left turn can complete rapidly using a specific multiplier.

Handles montages out of the box. Plenty of functions to override to determine behaviour in the UTurnInPlace component.

Clean & Contained

This system is very condensed. There is a TurnInPlace UActorComponent that is responsible for the functionality, and functions that you can call to from your Anim Graph that handle everything you need.

Mesh-Based TIP

Primarily this setup is seen in LyraStarterGame. It is inadequate and causes significant issues everywhere it touches.

This technique negates the rotation from the character's mesh by applying a RootYawOffset to the skeleton's root bone, using the Rotate Root Bone anim graph node.

Mesh Smoothing

Simulated proxies are characters other than your own that you see in multiplayer games. Simulated proxies receive a very simplistic condensed location and rotation from the server, then applies smoothing directly to the mesh so that you don't notice the considerable jitter due to intermittent replication and compression of these properties.

This mesh smoothing applies to the root bone rotation, and they fight each other. This causes considerable jitter that increases with latency. The jitter will be particularly noticable when the RootYawOffset is higher, and a turn has not been initiated.

To counteract this, you must switch NetworkSmoothingMode from the default Exponential to Linear. Exponential looks really good, its distance based, linear doesn't look particularly good. You also need to increase the NetworkSimulatedSmoothRotationTime to help mask this defect, but now your simulated proxies are very late updating to their actual facing direction, which has quality issues but also gameplay issues for fast action-based competitive games.

The larger issue with using Linear over Exponential isn't rotation, its translation. Linear translation looks truly poor. Your sim proxies constantly get yoinked backwards when they come to a stop and the start doesn't look great either!

This leaves you making serious sacrifices for something that is entirely not important affecting every aspect of your game. One option is to modify the engine to decouple the NetworkSmoothingMode so that you can set Translation separately from Rotation, however that is very difficult and can be prone to issues that are extremely difficult to diagnose because they are tightly interconnected.

Locomotion / Anim Compensation

We now have additional rotation to factor into every single system we build. Do we want to use a rotation based on the actual mesh rotation, or do we want the mesh rotation based on where we see it facing based on the RootYawOffset?

Furthermore, when adding procedural systems, however simple, they might fight your Rotate Root Bone, especially when sockets come into play which you will often find to be a frame behind the Rotate Root Bone!

Anim Graph Overload

There is too much in the anim graph that goes into building the system Lyra uses.

Changelog

Future Updates

• Custom Gravity
• Mover 2.0 out of the box support

1.2.0

• Backport demo content for 5.3
  • Tidied it up a bit too
• Fix included BP_GameMode, was referencing unavailable class
• Remove CacheUpdatedCharacter() from UTurnInPlace::PostLoad(), fails check calling BlueprintNativeEvent

1.1.0

• Add support for APawn without ACharacter + UCharacterMovementComponent
  • Extremely advanced -- Read the Wiki entry

1.0.4

• Improved UPROPERTY descriptors for FTurnInPlaceParams and FTurnInPlaceAnimSet considerably

1.0.3

• Fix bug where TurnOffset not reset when using strafe direct and moving

1.0.2

• Fixed bug where ETurnInPlaceEnabledState wasn't always handled properly
• Added demo map buttons to preview ETurnInPlaceEnabledState

1.0.1

• Create component directly and unhide category to allow assignment to BP component

1.0.0

• Initial Release