You can set the Trace Method either in an interactable actor in the details tab of AC_MakeInteractable or for foliage in DT_InteractableFoliage.
The different trace methods build up on 2 types of traces. First, a simple line trace which is used for the Direct Trace method. You can set in the max trace length for Direct Traces by adjusting DirectTraceLength in AC_PC_Interaction. Second, a multi sphere trace that is used for the other methods. You can set the radius in which it should do this trace by adjusting SphereTraceRange in AC_PC_Interaction. It makes sense to set both variables to the same value.
However you need to consider these to lengths/ranges as the maximum the system scans for. For the individual interactables you can always define a Max Distance To Character to make it necessary that you get closer to the interactable to be able to focus it.
You can use this if you have many interactables that should use the same Trace Method. If you select this it will take the DefaultTraceMethod that you defined in AC_PC_Interaction.
It could also be useful if you want to change the default trace method at runtime then this change counts for all interactables that use the default trace method and you do not need to change the trace method for each and every interactable.
This is the classical trace where you have to look directly at the mesh to focus it. Please make sure that the mesh is blocking Visibility:
But if it is not used for foliage it does not necessarily (only) be a mesh that is blocking visibility, you can also add a box/sphere collision and make this blocking visibility to make it easier to hit and focus the interactable.
For that it is important that you have defined a center location. For foliage you can do that in DT_InteractableFoliage (Focusing -> Look At Center Relative Location) and for intractable actors you can check the How to make any actor interactable section of this documentation.
This center of the interactable will be taken to calculate how much you are looking at the center. If you look perfectly at the center location it means you look 100% at it and the calculation returns 1. While if you look perfectly away (so in the opposite direction) it returns -1. Now you can define for an interactable the Min Look At Percentage. So how much % you need to look in the direction of the interactable to focus it. So if you set it to a low value such as 0.7 it is very easy to focus it even if you look much besides it. If you set it on 0.9 you maybe can look slightly beside it to focus it. But this depends also on the scale and dimension an interactable has. So you need to test a bit to find a good Min Look At Percentage that you like.
If there are several interactables close to each other and several of these fulfilling the condition of the Min Look At Percentage then the system will choose to focus the intractable at which you look the most (which has the highest look at percentage).
The look at percentage trace is also great if you have controller/gamepad inputs since you often cannot look so precisely on small interactables as you can do it with a mouse. This interaction system has controller inputs, so if you have an XBox controller you can try it!
It can also be used for top down.
A mix out of both traces. If you only use the Look At trace and are very close to an interactable and look at the mesh it could be that it is not focusing because the look at percentage is too low. Then it makes sense to additionally have the Direct Trace. So it combines the advantages of both trace methods and because of that the Direct Trace Otherwise Look At Trace method is in most cases recommended.
It can also be used for top down.
It is just there because it was easy to set up and some people would like to use this method. But in my opinion it does not make sense to use it. Two methods that do not fit well together.
Closest To Character Trace (Top Down):
You are focusing the interactable that is the closest to your character/pawn. You can define a Max Distance To Character. Hereby you can define how close the character actually needs to be to an interactable to focus it.
Then you can just not trace and focus the interactable anymore. Could also be useful for interactables that only need a single interaction. Like a button to open a door and after that the door is forever open. So you also do not need to interact with the button anymore.
Here is how you could implement something like that:
Select the AC_MakeInteractable component in your interactable actor. In the details tab scroll down to the bottom and add the OnInteractedServer Event. Then in the Event Graph you can do this:
