Quick Start
This gets a drone navigating your level in a few minutes. It assumes a level with some static geometry to fly around.
1. Place the Nav Manager
Drag BP_DroneNavManager into your level. There should be exactly one per level — it owns the navigation graph.
2. Place one or more Nav Volumes
Drag BP_DroneNavVolume into the level and scale its GenerationBounds box to cover the airspace the drone may use. The volume fills that region with candidate nodes.
You can place several volumes — the manager aggregates them all into one graph. Use big, sparse volumes over open areas and smaller, denser ones near complex geometry.
3. Set up drone collision (do not skip)
The drone agent must be transparent to the navigation trace channel, or every path query fails. This is the #1 setup mistake — see Required: Drone Collision Setup. It takes 30 seconds.
4. Bake the graph
Open the BakeDroneNav editor widget (right-click it → Run Editor Utility Widget) and press Bake Navigation. This builds the graph from your volumes and writes it into a data asset so it loads instantly at runtime.
Watch the output log — the bake prints node/connection counts and will warn loudly if your settings would fragment the graph.
Re-bake whenever you change level geometry or volume placement. The bake reflects editor-time collision.
5. Verify the graph
In the BakeDroneNav widget (or on the manager) press Show Nav Graph. You'll see the baked graph drawn in the viewport: green = connected nodes, red = isolated, blue = connections. Press Hide Nav Graph to clear it.
If you see lots of red, jump to Troubleshooting.
6. Add the drone
Drop BP_AIDrone into the level. It comes with its own AI controller (BP_AIDroneController) that runs the behavior tree, the movement component, facing, rotor audio, and banking already wired.
7. (Optional) Give it a patrol route
Add a BP_PatrolPath, shape its spline, then select your BP_AIDrone and set its PatrolPath property to that path. With no target in sight, the drone patrols the spline; when it senses the player, it chases. See Patrol.
8. Play
Press Play. The drone patrols (if you set a path) and chases when it detects the player.
To watch the exact route it computes, enable DrawCalculatedPath? on the manager — see Debugging Tools.