Physics in Unreal Engine 5

Name: Physics in Unreal Engine 5
Author: Ken Geary

Discover how physics and physics materials work and the effects they add.

Preview the first lesson free — get full access to all 3 lessons.

Course: On-Demand

Hello. In this lesson, we'll learn about physics materials in Unreal Engine 5. Let's create a new project. Which is blank, start our content on. And we'll call this Physics. Under File, we'll start a new level. Which is Default. Let's make a bookmark right away. Go to the Hamburger Menu, Bookmarks, Set Bookmark. Bookmark 1. Now, let's save our level. File, Save Current Level As. Create a maps folder. I'll save this as Level 1. A material in Unreal Engine is used to visually represent surfaces with colors, textures and shaders. A physical material can be used to define how the physics of an actor reacts to the environment. We'll make a physics material and see what it does. First, let's set the grid snap to 50. And let's create two colors. Open content. Create a new folder called Materials. Open that folder. Create a material. First one, we'll call M_red. Make a simple red color for it. Remember, you can hit the 3 key and click as a shortcut. And save. Let's make a duplicate of this material and use Control + W to make a duplicate. We'll call this M_LiteBlue. Open that up, change the color. And we'll save. Now I'll add a new platforms for our simulations. Press the 1 key. To jump back to our bookmark. Click Create, Shapes, Plane. Move the plan over 100 units to the right. That should be two snaps to the right. Hold the Alt key and drag a copy about 100 units to the left. And we're gonna go up 50 units. Now rotate this plane using the E key. Wanna rotate this 20 degrees. Select the original plane and rotate that minus 20 degrees. Use the Q key to select, select one plane, Shift + select a second plane. Press W. Hold down the Alt key, and we'll drag up a duplicate of these two. You're gonna go up two snaps. Now again, make sure we're in our bookmark, hit 1. We'll create shapes. This time, we'll create a sphere. We'll move this sphere up. We're gonna give it the red material. Let's go to Material section in the Details panel. And we'll type in red. Here's our M_red material. Now keep note, this is a color material and not a physics material. Now I wanna scale down this sphere to 0.25 in X, Y, and Z. And let's move it over. And make sure it's above the plane. Okay, and again, you hit the 1 key to keep to our bookmark. And in order for physics to work, select the object you want to have physics assigned to it. Scroll down your Details panel and in the Physics section, click on Simulate Physics. And you can simulate physics when you hit Play by hitting the option. Click the three dots next to Play. And select Simulate. As you see, the ball bounces and falls to the ground. Stop the simulation. Now when you simulate, you can have your camera at any angle. And this is a good way of checking how your simulation's going. Now let's crate some physics materials. Open the Content folder. Right-click, make a new folder. We'll call this Physics Materials. Open the folder up. Right-click and now we're gonna go to the Physics menu and we're gonna select a physical material. When the popup menu shows up, select Physical Material, then Select. We will name this material PM for physical material, underscore rubber. Now double-click to open the material. We got a new editor window. It's very simple. Only a few settings we're gonna play with today. And this case, because it's rubber, we're gonna take the restitution and set it to a value of one, which is the maximum value. Restitution is the amount of bounciness of a physical object. Click Save. Close out the editor. Select this sphere in a Viewport. In the Details menu, scroll down to the Collisons section. Open the Physical Material Override menu and select the material we just made. Type in rubber. And here's our PM_rubber we created. Now play again, remember we're on Simulate. Notice the ball bounces a lot more. Press Escape to stop. Now let's take this physical material and duplicate it. You do that by hitting Control + W or Command + W on Mac. We'll call this PM_cardboard. We'll open that up in the editor. In this case, we want the friction to be high. We can set it to a higher value of like 10. Restitution, we'll reset. We can set any value in Unreal, by clicking the back arrow, if it's available. Now we'll click Save. Select cardboard, duplicate it again, Control + W. Or Command + W. Next material we make will be called PM_ice. Open PM_ice. Now what we'll do is take the friction all the way to zero. It's a little bit of an exaggeration. In real life, there's always a little bit of friction on a material. Click Save, close the editor. Now we're gonna make sure you hit the 1 key for bookmark. Now we're gonna Create Shapes, Cube. We'll drag this cube up and to the right. Let's change material. Not the physical material. Scroll up to Materials section. And we'll type in blue. This is our light blue material. Let's scroll all the way back up to Scale. Gonna scale this to 0.5 in X, Y and Z. Also rotate this to line up with the plane. Scroll back down in the Details panel. To the Collisions section. And we'll type in ice. Select our PM_ice. Let's do a Save All at this point. You can rotate your Camera View to get a better look. Now hit Play. And the cube did not move because, you gotta select the cube. And make sure our physics is turned on. So I'm checking Simulate Physics. I'll hit Play again. Now the cube is sliding. Now we'll try a material that has a higher friction. We'll select our cube again. You could also drag and drop physical materials into the slot so I can take the cardboard, the PM_cardboard, drag it into the Physical Materials Override slot. I'll Simulate. Now the cube stays there. That's 'cause it's got higher friction. In the next lesson, we're gonna learn about destructibles in Unreal Engine 5. Thanks for watching.

Beginner Provider : Ken Geary 3 Lessons · 21m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Urdu, Chinese

Course Description

In these lessons, you will learn how basic physics work in the Unreal Engine level, enhance the physics of an actor using physics materials, and fracture and destroy meshes using the chaos physics and destructible meshes. You’ll also take a brief look into creating a particle system and particle emitters that can add effects to your level, such as fire, smoke, and rain.

Unreal Engine 5 has updated its physics system from PhysX to chaos physics, which is a lightweight physics simulation solution that includes major features such as rigid body dynamics, cloth physics, destruction, ragdoll physics, vehicles, physics fields, fluid simulation, and hair simulation. This course covers creating a physics material to allow you to adjust bounciness and friction of any actor that has physics enabled. You’ll also create a basic particle system and one emitter using the new Niagra particle system in Unreal Engine 5.

What You'll Learn

Explain the role of physics within an Unreal Engine 5 level
Apply physics materials to adjust the bounciness and friction of physics-enabled actors
Fracture and destroy meshes using chaos physics and destructible meshes
Create a basic particle system and a particle emitter using the Niagara particle system
Add level effects such as fire, smoke, and rain using particle emitters

Key Takeaways

Unreal Engine 5 replaced the PhysX physics system with chaos physics, a lightweight physics simulation solution.
Chaos physics includes features such as rigid body dynamics, cloth physics, destruction, ragdoll physics, vehicles, physics fields, fluid simulation, and hair simulation.
Physics materials let you adjust the bounciness and friction of any actor that has physics enabled.
Particle systems and emitters can add effects to a level, including fire, smoke, and rain.
The Niagara particle system is used in Unreal Engine 5 to build particle systems and emitters.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this course cover?

It covers how basic physics work in an Unreal Engine level, enhancing the physics of an actor using physics materials, fracturing and destroying meshes using chaos physics and destructible meshes, and creating a particle system and particle emitters for effects such as fire, smoke, and rain.

Which physics system does this course use?

It uses chaos physics, the lightweight physics simulation solution that Unreal Engine 5 adopted in place of PhysX, which includes rigid body dynamics, cloth physics, destruction, ragdoll physics, vehicles, physics fields, fluid simulation, and hair simulation.

What will I be able to create with particle systems?

You will create a basic particle system and one emitter using the new Niagara particle system in Unreal Engine 5, which can add effects to your level such as fire, smoke, and rain.

What lessons are included in the course?

The course includes three lessons: Physics Materials; Chaos Physics and Destructibles; and Particle Systems.

What skills does this course help build?

It builds skills in Game Physics, Physically Based Animation, UnrealScript, Unreal Development Kit, Unreal Engine, and Visual Simulations.