In-built into Unreal is an easily available buoyancy component which can be quickly manipulated within a blueprint actor. However, this component is dependent upon physics, so it can correctly respond to the displacement of the water it occupies.
I saw this method as unnecessarily performance heavy, for how distant the buoyant assets are. Instead I aimed to replicate the "look" of buoyancy through manipulating the assets location within world space, so it can hold any rotation and still float up and down. Furthermore, rotation within local space plays a part in making the buoyant assets sway; as if they are being hit by waves.
World space is the coordinate system for the entire scene. It's origin is at the center of the scene (0,0,0). On the other hand, local space uses the origin and axes of said asset.
My "fake" buoyancy was achieved through the application of vector timelines (value occupies the y axis of the graph and time along the x), with a focus on specific axis' (XYZ), the location and rotation can be changed over time, with control over the interpolation between points. Therefore, creating ease in and ease out, similar to animation, preventing jittery movement when the timeline loops. The first timeline controls the movement along the Z axis and the lower timeline controls the rotation of the asset around the X axis
Similar to the destructible objects, this effect simply adds more movement to a static environment. Which is greatly exaggerated in comparison to the players fast paced, back and forth. This task was extremely straight forward and simple, just required some out of the box thinking to create an optimised alternative.
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