Skip to content

Glossary

Definitions for the terms that recur across the navigation and spacing settings, gathered here so you can look one up instead of hunting the page that happens to use it. Each entry links to the page that covers it in full.

"Clearance" means three different things

The word clearance appears in three separate settings, and each one controls something different. Keep them apart:

  • Wall Clearance (Strength / Distance) shapes the route. At bake time it makes cells near a wall cost more to cross, so the path bows away from walls and rounds corners with a margin instead of grazing them.
  • Surface Flow Wall Margin is a runtime body gap. Each step it holds a moving agent's body a little further off a blocked cell edge so it does not clip into the wall.
  • Clearance Radius is an agent size. It tells the bake how wide the agent's footprint is, which decides whether a gap between two walls is passable.

One shapes where the path goes, one holds bodies off the wall as they move, one sets how big the agent is assumed to be.

Term What it is Set on Not to be confused with
Wall Clearance Strength Bake-time cost that bows the route off walls. 0 turns the berth off — routes graze walls and corners again. Swarm Manager Surface Flow Wall Margin; Clearance Radius
Wall Clearance Distance How far the route berth reaches from a wall, in world units. Swarm Manager Surface Flow Wall Margin; Clearance Radius
Clearance Radius Agent footprint radius the bake sphere-casts with. A slot narrower than twice this bakes non-passable. Swarm Manager (0.5), and again on a standalone Surface Flow Field component (0) Wall Clearance; the archetype's sim body radius
Agent Height Standing height the bake checks as a capsule, so a floor under a low overhang bakes walkable only when the agent fits. Needs a non-zero Clearance Radius and an Unwalkable mask — with either unset, the overhead check is skipped. Swarm Manager (1.5), and again on a standalone Surface Flow Field component (0) Clearance Radius, which is width
Enforce Cell Boundaries Runtime clamp that stops an agent crossing into a cell the bake marked blocked. Swarm Settings the bake-time berth, which runs once at bake
Surface Flow Wall Margin Extra runtime gap between an agent body and a blocked cell edge, added to the agent's own radius. Active only with Enforce Cell Boundaries on. Default 0.05. Swarm Settings Wall Clearance Distance
Radius / Wall Margin (Simple Flow Field Follower) The same body-off-wall gap on the sample follower component, for a single non-swarm object. Follower component the swarm's own Surface Flow Wall Margin

Clearance Radius and Agent Height appear under those exact labels in two places: on the Swarm Manager, which bakes the swarm's own field, and on a standalone Surface Flow Field component, which bakes its own. The values are separate and the standalone defaults are both zero, so a field baked there skips the width and overhead checks until you fill them in. Set them on whichever component owns the bake you are looking at.

For the full behavior of each, see Navigation and Swarm Settings.

"Blocking" is four separate passes

Four settings groups share the word blocking. Three correct positions. The fourth blocks nothing at all.

Pass Keeps agents out of How it acts
Body Blocking each other Position correction — resolves the agent-to-agent overlap left over after steering.
Obstacle Blocking level geometry — walls, pillars, props Position correction — pushes a body back out toward the side it came from.
Target Body Blocking the target's body Position correction — separates any agent that has clipped inside the target radius.
Target Crowd Blocking nothing Measurement — publishes how hard the crowd is pressing on each target, for your game code to read. Moves no one.

Of the two target-side entries, only Target Body Blocking touches an agent. Target Crowd Blocking is a readout that happens to sit in the same part of the inspector, so treat the shared word as an accident of naming rather than a family resemblance.

Other pairs that read alike

Target obstacle beyond 8 the baked route drives, it bends Direct Approach Distance (8) inside it, straight at the target Goal Release Distance (2) the field lets go and the behaviors run the surround
The two distances are hand-off points, not strengths. Outside the larger one, the baked route steers and the path bends around geometry. Between them the agent gives up on the route and heads straight in. Inside the smaller one the field is out of the picture entirely and the behaviors run the surround.

Personal Space vs Body Blocking. Personal Space is a steering behavior — each agent adds a push away from nearby neighbors, so the crowd spreads through movement. Body Blocking is a simulation pass that corrects whatever overlap is left over, so bodies hold space instead of sharing it. One suggests, the other enforces. Personal Space is set per archetype on the Behavior Profile; Body Blocking is global, on Swarm Settings.

Congestion Bias vs Congestion Reroute. Both react to crowded surface-flow cells. Congestion Bias nudges each agent's sampled direction toward less-occupied neighbor cells in the moment — the baked route never changes. Congestion Reroute schedules a rebake that charges crowded cells extra cost, so the route itself moves to another corridor. Bias smooths distribution now; Reroute commits the change to the field over a few seconds.

Direct Approach Distance vs Goal Release Distance. Both decide when an agent near its target stops following the flow route, and they hand off in sequence. Inside Direct Approach Distance — measured along the flow route, so a ramp counts as farther — the agent steers straight at the target while still on the field. Inside Goal Release Distance the agent ignores the field entirely and behavior steering takes over for the final surround. Both live on Swarm Settings; the route-measured hand-off needs Quality Smooth or Eikonal.