AI Drone
An autonomous patrol & combat drone with true 3D navigation, for Unreal Engine 5.
Welcome to the AI Drone documentation — a Blueprint-only flying-enemy AI built around a fully 3D navigation system, for Unreal Engine 5.
What is it?
Unreal's built-in NavMesh is designed for walking agents on a 2D-ish floor. AI Drone replaces it with a fully 3D, data-based navigation graph so flying enemies can route through open air, around obstacles, over and under geometry — anywhere a volume says they can fit.
It ships as a complete enemy-drone stack: the navigation graph, a reusable movement component, a behavior-tree brain (chase / search / patrol / idle), and authoring tools for patrol paths — all in Blueprints, with no C++ and no plugin dependencies.
Key features
- True 3D pathfinding — index-based A* over a generated node graph, not a floor mesh
- Bake once, load instantly — graph is baked in-editor into a data asset; no runtime generation spike
- Reusable movement component — inertia, local obstacle avoidance, path smoothing
- Behavior-tree brain — chase, search-last-known, patrol, idle, cleanly separated from the body
- Spline patrol — author patrol routes with a spline + optional hold markers, with a live "does it fit?" preview
- Tuning presets — Indoor Dense / Balanced / Outdoor Sparse, with loud warnings if you mis-tune
- Model-agnostic — works with any static or skeletal mesh; rotor audio + visual banking included
What's in the box
| System | Asset(s) |
|---|---|
| Navigation graph | BP_DroneNavManager, BP_DroneNavVolume, S_DroneNavNodeData |
| Movement | BP_DronePathFollowerComponent |
| Drone pawn + brain | BP_AIDrone, BP_AIDroneController, BT_AIDrone, BPI_ControllableDrone |
| Patrol authoring | BP_PatrolPath, BP_PatrolHoldMarker |
| Tuning presets | DroneNavConfig + DA_NavConfig_* |
| Editor tools | BakeDroneNav widget |
| Example map + UI | M_DroneNav_Test, BP_DroneDebugControlsComponent |
Requirements
- Unreal Engine 5.4 – 5.7
- Blueprint only — no C++ compilation, no external plugins
Next steps
In a hurry? Open the included Example Map and press Play to see the whole system running with zero setup.
To build it into your own level, head to the Quick Start to get a drone flying in a few minutes, then read the Required: Drone Collision Setup — it's the single most common setup mistake.
Want the details? How It Works explains the architecture, and the Blueprint Reference lists each blueprint's key properties and functions.