Creating an Off-mesh Link

Off-Mesh Links are used to create paths crossing outside the walkable navigation mesh surface. For example, jumping over a ditch or a fence, or opening a door before walking through it, can be all described as Off-mesh links.

We’re going to add an Off-Mesh Link component to describe a jump from the upper platform to the ground.

1. First create two cylinders: Game Object > 3D Object > cylinder.
2. You can scale the cylinders to (0.1, 0.5, 0.1) to make it easier to work with them.
3. Move the first cylinder at the edge of the top platform, close to the NavMesh surface.
4. Place the second cylinder on the ground, close to the NavMesh, at the location where the link should land.
5. Select the cylinder on the left and add an Off-Mesh Link component to it. Choose Add Component from the inspector and choose Navigation > Off Mesh Link.
6. Assign the leftmost cylinder in the Start field and rightmost cylinder in the End field.

Now you have functioning Off-Mesh Link set up! If the path via the off-mesh link is shorter than via walking along the Navmesh, the off-mesh link will be used.

You can use any game object in the scene to hold the Off-Mesh link component, for example a fence prefab could contain the off-mesh link component. Similarly you can use any game object with a Transform as the start and end marker.

The NavMesh bake process can detect and create common jump-across and drop-down links automatically. Take a look at the Building Off-Mesh Links Automatically for more details.

Further Reading

• Building Off-Mesh Links Automatically - learn how to automatically build Off-Mesh Links.
• Navigation HowTos - common use cases for NavMesh Agent, with source code.
• Off-Mesh Link component reference – full description of all the Off-Mesh Link properties.
• Off-Mesh Link scripting reference - full description of the Off-Mesh Link scripting API.