Advanced Ledge System on Unreal Engine 5 Only Blueprints - Part 18
We wired up a full freehang pass in UE5: picking and retargeting campus animations, tagging ledges to trigger freehang, routing clean montage selection, and fixing a couple of sneaky Blueprint mistakes. You’ll see the exact spots to plug animations, how to block bad transitions, and what to tweak when hands float or motion looks jittery.
Perfect for indie and intermediate Unreal users who want AAA-style ledge movement with tidy Blueprints and fewer surprises.
Most valuable lessons and insights:
Make sure to use a Freehang tag on green ledge stripes and read that tag in code to decide when legs should dangle.
Make sure to read the correct data structure for movement. Hang trace is for first-attach on F press, dynamic ledge data is for left and right navigation. Mixing them breaks freehang switching.
Make sure your montages use the ledge slot and that short freehang montages are grouped in a dedicated struct. Slot and struct setup made navigation play correctly.
Make sure to guard movement when the direction enum returns Not Set Up. If it is not set up, do nothing. This prevents sliding or wrong moves.
Make sure to prefer forced root lock or no root motion on shaky retargets. It kept the capsule stable while we refine animation retargeting later.
Chapters
00:00:00 Kickoff and what freehang means
00:00:47 Freehang pack overview and where to get it
00:02:49 Import and retarget plan for campus animations
00:07:02 Retargeter setup and replacing skeleton references
00:11:10 Validate assets and populate the retargeter
00:25:59 Choosing the freehang entry montage and quick tests
00:29:04 Adding a Freehang tag and boolean, wiring first attach
00:31:09 Montage selector hook for freehang movement
00:35:55 Building the short freehang struct and assigning clips
00:41:16 First in-game test and slot check
00:44:22 Color-coding ledges and tagging freehang in levels
00:45:37 Bug hunt: wrong structure used for navigation
00:52:06 Fixed: switching to dynamic ledge data enables freehang
00:58:11 Safety rule: block moves when direction enum is Not Set Up
01:01:10 Clean result and remaining polish
01:04:14 Next steps: medium and long freehang distances
01:05:00 Considering Motion Warping to replace timelines later
📁 Resources & links
Download all the project files from all the livestreams:
/ locodev
Document of the Ledge System(work in progress
): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z...
📌 Unreal Engine Version used: UE5.5
Link of the animations I'm using: https://www.fab.com/listings/fbfda52a...
👇 Follow me on social media:
Discord Server: / discord
Twitter: / locodev7701
Instagram: / devloco