FMath::CartesianToPolar

function Core Since 4.0

#include "Math/UnrealMathUtility.h"

Access: public Specifiers: static

Description

Converts a 2D Cartesian coordinate pair to polar form (radius and angle). A FVector2D overload is also available that accepts and returns TVector2.

Caveats & Gotchas

• The output angle OutAng is in radians in the range [-π, π] (the range of Atan2). Convert to degrees with RadiansToDegrees if your downstream code expects degrees.
• Passing (0, 0) returns radius 0 and angle 0 — Atan2(0,0) is defined as 0 in UE's implementation, so no special-case handling is needed.

Signature

template<typename T>
static inline void CartesianToPolar(const T X, const T Y, T& OutRad, T& OutAng)

Parameters

Name	Type	Description	Default
X	const T	Cartesian X coordinate.	—
Y	const T	Cartesian Y coordinate.	—
OutRad	T&	Output radius (distance from origin).	—
OutAng	T&	Output angle in radians, in the range [-π, π].	—

Return Type

void

Example

Convert a 2D velocity to speed and heading C++

FVector2D Vel(VelocityX, VelocityY);
float Speed, HeadingRad;
FMath::CartesianToPolar(Vel.X, Vel.Y, Speed, HeadingRad);
float HeadingDeg = FMath::RadiansToDegrees(HeadingRad);

Version History

Introduced in: 4.0

Version	Status	Notes
5.6	stable	—

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