Integration of chrono physics engine in Unreal Engine 5

[Aman Chauhan]

Hello all, I have downloaded the official repository of the Chrono physics engine from the github and compiled the binaries. The demos of the chrono engine are working fine in the system which means that chrono engine is installed successfully.

I want to integrate this chrono engine with the unreal engine 5 so that I can make use of it's vehicle physics.

Please, if anyone can help would really be appreciated.

[HUZAIFA MUSTAFA UNJHAWALA]

Hello!

I am Huzaifa and am a PhD student at one of the labs that actively develops Project Chrono. I am mostly involved at the moment with the Fluid-Structure Interaction part of Chrono (Chrono::FSI). However I would be interested in doing this as a side project and would love to help you in this. Let me know if we can connect through private email.

Best

[Deniz Tanyildiz]

Hello all,
I'm Deniz. I have worked with Chrono engine in the past and I am also interested in Chrono-UE5 integration. So if you would like to have a group work, I could be interested.

Best regards,
Deniz

[Stefan Oberpeilsteiner]

Hello all,

this is of interest for me too, as I am working with UE5 too and currently implementing a vehicle model (not in Chrono engine). So if you want to collaborate, I'd be happy to connect via mail.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[闫闫波]

Hi All,
this is of interest for me too, I am working on a robot simulation using UE5. I am also considering whether the open-source Chrono physics engine can be integrated with UE5's rendering engine to achieve this simulation. Currently, I have used the AGXDynamics for Unreal plugin, but it is a commercially licensed library. I am exploring whether it is possible to achieve this application using open-source simulation libraries.

[闫闫波]

“Oh, by the way, the AGXDynamics for Unreal plugin integrates various modules from the AGXDynamics simulation engine into Unreal as much as possible by building them into third-party libraries using .dll and .lib files. I am wondering if I can follow this approach to build the modules from Chrono into third-party libraries for Unreal, making them accessible through a plugin.”

[JC Denton]

I integrated Chrono into Unreal, yes it can be done.

Rough Steps are to make an interface project which serves as an interface API between the Unreal world and the Chrono world. This should be a dll separate from chrono and unreal.

for me I call from Unreal to Chrono. I pass my inputs to Chrono, and then I retreive the ouputs from Chrono back to Unreal

You will need to convert the coordinate space to/from chrono to unreal

Unreal also uses a custom allocator which can cause problems for you when Chrono creates objects on the heap. To fix that I pass Unreal's allocator functions to Chrono when the app starts