How to Make a Line Trace | Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial

Summary (Technological Concepts / Tutorial Content)

• Goal: Create a Line Trace in Unreal Engine 5 that can be used for weapons, interaction, and other gameplay systems.
• Trigger setup: In a Third Person Character, bind the logic to the Left Mouse Button (Pressed) event.

Blueprint Nodes / Flow

• Use Line Trace by Channel.
• Start point: Get camera position via Get World Location (camera location).
• Aim direction: Use Get Base Aim Rotation, then extract the Forward Vector.
• Trace length control: Scale the forward vector (convert to float and multiply by 1000) so the trace reaches roughly 10 meters.
• End point: Compute the end vector by adding the scaled forward direction to the camera start location.

Debugging

• Set Draw Debug Type to For Duration so the trace line is visible in the world.

Hit Feedback

• Use Break Hit Result.
• Use Print String to display the name of the hit actor.

Collision Settings (Critical for Detection)

To ensure the trace detects enemies/objects:

• On the enemy mesh:
  • Change collision from default to Custom.
  • Set Visibility Trace Response to Block to match the trace channel used by the line trace.

Result

• When pressing Left Mouse Button, the system fires the line trace and prints the enemy actor name, confirming detection works.

Main Speaker / Source

• Manny Man (creator/instructor referenced in the subtitles)