Seems like you could use the Move Direction to push the ball around...
I didn't think it worked in that way, but I spent this morning trying it and it does not. Ball is still stationary.
Here is a list of things I have tried:
Parenting - I spawn and parent the ball to a 'holder' object just in front of the player.
Because there is no angular velocity when this is done, I have a child-object rotate to represent rolling.
Speed and angle are derived from the player.
Parent ball is used for collision against slopes.
Result: This works the best, however I have to manually adjust the 'holder' object as the ball grows in size (player is rolling snowballs), and it gets quite finicky. Additionally, the ball rolling animation is not very good, as I have to roll on different axes in order to avoid the ball looking in the direction of it's rotation.
This is what I will fall back to if all else fails, because it still works for gameplay.Force Driven -Ball is spawned in front of player.
Player has a trigger volume attached and positioned in front of it.
When the ball enteres the trigger, a force is applied.
Result: No amount of drag or force value will let the ball move forward smoothly, remaining near player and not being kicked out of range. This just took too much tweaking to make it worth it. Physics are like that. Stupid physics...
Direct Translation -Spawn ball in front of player
Make player LookAt ball at all times in this state.
Get Horizontal and Vertical Axes
Using the axes values, moderate between moving forward or rotating around the ball to change direction.
Result: The character controller will push the ball PERFECTLY using this method, however due to the direct manipulation of the player transform, the character controller no longer responds to environment collisions, and can be rotated through walls or walk through slopes. This would be my favored method if I had an easy way to write a collision script from scratch. (Open to alternatives! I'm certain I missed something in this method).
There were a few other things I attempted that aren't worth mentioning, mostly because they weren't ways I wanted the game to go. Thanks for reading and offering any ideas. I'd love to know if one of these methods should work as intended also. I am seriously mentally fatigued from this particular aspect of my project.