#visual-fx

1 messages · Page 12 of 1

solid stream
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but yeah, we used this kind of setup for VR (movable directional + stationary skylight) and it works decently enough for ToD stuff

fossil swan
subtle idol
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hey guys! I have forgotten the name of a node in the material editor for particles. I want to say its called "Custom Color" or something and it is basically just the same as the "Particle Color" node, but you can name the inputs for the particle system. very noob question. I have googled.

fossil swan
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dynamic?

subtle idol
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thats the one, thanks a lot! I dont know how I forgot,

fossil swan
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hehe we've all been there.
I still have it with the scaleUVfromCenter node or whatever its called

subtle idol
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cant say ive used that one? scale the UVs on the particle effect?

fossil swan
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its for general usage, it doesnt scale them from 0/0 but 0.5/0.5 in uv space

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can be handy for a lot of things

subtle idol
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oh! I see it now! that is cool. it allows different scales on the UV... though I still dont know what the mask output is for

fossil swan
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connect to multiply, preview it while changing values

subtle idol
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Cool Stuff!

subtle idol
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another one for you guys... this time I know the name and I cant find it... has "motion 4 way chaos" changed name? or just not available in 4.18?

analog onyx
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@subtle idol Enable show engine content in the content browser and search for it there

subtle idol
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No luck with that unfortunately :/ I just made a basic one myself for now I suppose

fossil swan
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@subtle idol show engine content > click on engine content folder > search > motion 4way

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its there

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i just shwocased it on livestream :p

subtle idol
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ahh! ok, I was still within my content

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thank you

spare hare
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@fossil swan
How would I make a material for a radial (flat) blast material, where the width of the ring stays the same?

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I dunno hwo to visualize this

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the ring should stay the same width instead of getting wider (because bigger UVs to cover)

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(The inner of the Ring gradually fades to transparent)

fossil swan
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somethingsomething object size and use that to change the thinckness of your procedurally made ring

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(bit busy atm so cant go into detail)

spare hare
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Okay thanks anways 😃

indigo jolt
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i'd use radial uv's

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and a line

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these are sometimes called Polar Coordinates

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not mine, but has good example of ring doing what you described

sullen forge
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portal FX

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very basic material, similar to the thing i showed yesterday

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@fossil swan . Im looking to create a spark FX for sword hits

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the issue is that its VR, i cant control the hit direction

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got any idea how could i do it? maybe have the fx work on the X axis and align it as needed?

celest jasper
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what do you mean you can't control the hit direction? you mean you don't know in which direction the particles should move when you hit a target?

sullen forge
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the thing is how exactly to rotate it

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becouse for example there is normal from the hit

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and there is also sword direction

celest jasper
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so your sparks are not small particles, but actually a plane like this and you don't know how to always rotate them to the player?

timid kiln
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When a Particle Mesh data has a mesh with 2 materials how does one identify a color overlife for each?

fossil swan
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you cant really, though you could probably control one with regular particle color node, and the other with dynamic? if I where you i'd try to combine the two materials into one unless one is masked/opaque and the other transparent

timid kiln
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i think my problem is moreso the shape of the item a ball fading out alpha takes longer then the spikes on it due to fresnal 😄

celest birch
spare hare
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@celest birch looks weird. What should it be?

celest birch
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working on this

spare hare
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If you want to mask the foam only in the lower part, you can mask it with a Linear Gradient

celest birch
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its meant to be at the top on the corner and the bottom

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its also 4 pieces of geometry

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still got a long way to go

celest birch
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anyone know why my materials detail looks completely different ive followed the thread and guides and i never get the same result

fossil swan
pine crystal
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Will delete and post in correct area

fossil swan
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appreciated! 😃

celest birch
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Hello guys, I have an illustration with glow (aura) around it and it shows correctly as a texture but when I try to make it as a material instance, the aura looks like a pancake. Has anyone come across a similar poblem?

fossil swan
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image please, we cant help you without knowing what went wrong

celest birch
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Sorry, here it is. The first one (texture) looks correctly and the second one is a material instance and I was wondering how to make them match

celest birch
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@celest birch can you show your material graph?

fossil swan
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@TadasJ#4765 you are using masked, need to use transparency.

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(in the material editor)

celest birch
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Thanks! I'm trying to fix this now, but do you mean Transparency or Traslucency instead of Masked in the blend mode?

fossil swan
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yuz

celest birch
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it looks like this now which is looking acceptable in-game but still rather different from the texture glow

fossil swan
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if you dont need color set it to unlit

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and you might want to try and use a power or multiply after the alpha channel to tweak it

celest birch
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great, many many thanks!

fossil swan
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np 😃

celest birch
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my current progress with the stylized waterfall vfx

fossil swan
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i think you can only set a min/max trough bp in that case

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(afaik)

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you also need to change the min/max output ofcourse

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else its extremely slow hehe

indigo jolt
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@celest birch i think you're headed in the right direction, but i'd get a noise panning texture that has more detail so you can set it to only tile ONCE horizontally down the length

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it's very clear that one shape in that texture is appearing twice at same height along waterfall

celest birch
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@indigo jolt yeah i'll do that at the moment im just trying to get the foam to look more like this

stark dust
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Hey guys, I've been pulling my hair over something for a few hours now- what's happening is that my anim notifies seem to trigger several times during gameplay instead of a single one.

I have footstep particle effect setup on my Run animation, which looks good in the animation editor (one single burst per footstep), and look good as well when I drap and drop the animation into my level- but on my pawn character each footsteps have multiple particle bursts happening at once instead of a single one, resulting in too many particles.

My animation is setup inside a blendspace, and is the only animation inside this blendspace that has anim notifies (so it's not other animation triggering notifies at the same time), I've tinkered with trigger weight threshold and notify trigger mode, to no avail...

Kinda hitting a wall here, was hoping you guys would have an idea
cheers ! 😃

celest birch
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@stark dust i had this issue and its all to do with the blending, between 1 animation to another

stark dust
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@celest birch That was my first thought too, but my run animation is the only one that has notifies on it, so the extra triggered can't possibly come from another animation in the blend space.

celest birch
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@stark dust again thats what i thought

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if its smoke for example coming off the feet you would set it in the anim and then notify every frame the foot touches the floor

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when i did it, it was appearing on all 3 stages of the blend, walk run and sprint

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because dont forget its blending everything for 1 animation and then moving onto another

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if that makes much sense

stark dust
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Thanks for answer 😃 I'll try #animation, you're right ! Cheers

stark dust
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@celest birch AH ! I figured it out- it's because my character is setup using several skeletal meshes, all using the same anim blueprint (it's a customisable character)- so each 'body part' is triggering its own notify. Not sure how to handle that differently though...

stark dust
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The SetMasterPose component was the solution, if anyone has the same issue 😃

outer fulcrum
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Hello! everyone happy monday. Is it possible to set a particle's vector parameter to a random range?

fossil swan
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@outer fulcrum nope, only trough code/bp

indigo jolt
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oh length of ribbons not controlled that way

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they're kinda weird

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like 3 things affect their length

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one is Lifetime

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another is Spawn rate (unless you're using Spawn Per Unit)

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the it's the spawn rate inside that

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and the max particles thing affects it but only in that it provides a "cap"

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so set that at like 500 or whatever, then set lifetime to like 5 seconds and jack up particle spawn rate to 90 or something and you should get some really excessively long ribbons

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there's only one OK ribbon tutorial out there, otherwise the documentation and tutorials for ribbons are kinda horrible tbh

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so it's easy to get stuck

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right so jack up spawn rate in spawn per unit

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i think emitter duration might also impact this? i forget but might want to touch that too

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btw what kinda trail usage you doing - following a different particle within same particle system?

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as an arcing trail?

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on a character?

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any reason you're not using Anim Trails for this?

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(ribbons still could be right answer, just curious)

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they tend to be restricted to pre-defined animations, they're pretty awesome for that

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but yeah if you are trying to get a trail that follows a player-controlled movement rather than an anim, ribbon is answer

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so if it's locked to a player hand, you'll get super super short ribbons whenever you're not moving unless there's some existing Velocity added

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which is kind of an annoying thing to force on anything that isn't smoke

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works great if it's little wispy cigarette smoke trails....but yeah otherwise you're probably seeing your ribbon as like 3 inches long then 3 feet long depending on player movement i'm guessing

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well that's best case scenario i imagine if you don't have some velocity on there

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np

obtuse seal
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@celest birch complete shot in the dark but try adjusting spawn rate scale in proportion to velocity?

indigo jolt
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tangent tessellation scalar and step size

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i think one or both of those impact it

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but to a certain degree there's usually a certain "shakiness" to ribbons if they aren't going along a very clean arc

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it's something that i don't see as much in anim trails

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so in a real-time VR situation with ribbon attached to hand, you'll usually want some velocity to keep the whole thing "taut" otherwise it starts getting shakey

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and if you get the tessellation too high, you'll start getting overlapping poly shapes

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which is super ugly

surreal willow
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anyone know if interactive vector fields are possible in ue4

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for example if an object enters the space it modifies the vectors

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Additionally, vector fields may be reconstructed from a 2D image. In this case, an image much like a normal map can be imported and used to reconstruct a volume texture by extruding or revolving it around a volume. A static vector field may be added on top of this reconstruction to introduce some noise and randomness. Further, the 2D images may be animated by storing individual frames in an atlas texture. Doing so allows you to perform a fluid simulation offline and reconstruct the motion in real-time at very little cost.

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I am guessing you need to use a camera actor to project a texture which includes the collision mesh (which is moving each frame) and blend it into the vector field, then modulate said field with a material which is changing. Is that possible? Does it require a precomputed atlas of frames or can it be generated and updated through a material

surreal willow
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@celest birch for ribbons there is a paramater which controls how many segments are generated between each point, that will control the smoothness

celest birch
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@surreal willow Vector fields as in the stuff for GPU particles or texture vector fields?

surreal willow
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@celest birch the GPU vector field (I think)

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I want to create a global GPU vector field and then change its shape with a texture

celest birch
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Oh in that case I don't know

fossil swan
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@Toku#6777 not something that can be done outside of the box.

fossil swan
analog onyx
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@Toku#6777 Possible in general, not possible in stock engine. In any case quite performance heavy.

fossil swan
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@bright panther is trying to do something like that, but afaik nowhere near releasable atm

bright panther
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Yeah, I’d like to add 2D to 3D reconstruction vector fields but its still a ways off for us right this second.

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Though you can make animated vector fields without using an atlas

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Thats 35 vector fields animated over time

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@surreal willow

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I used our software VectorayGen to generate each animation frame (vector field) and then spawned all 35 in a blueprint with an intensity of 0. On play each vector field would change intensity to 200 one by one with a .2 second delay between each. After each delay the previous frame is set back to 0 intensity. Doing it this way lets you animate freely.

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Still a ways off from being interactive. Just depends on what you’re looking to do with that interactivity.

surreal willow
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making an interactive installation which is using ar tech to track users

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so the vector field needs to be modified realtime as an object moves through it

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I know its super expensive but we have a good rig to sim it , however I think nvidia flow grid is probably the best solution but its.quite self contained with its paramaters

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unreal docs mention you can animate a global vector field, however the actor isnt in the class list

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and also cant used a baked texture atlas/anim

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because I would need to use a projection of the collision actor in the vector.field to warp the field texture frame by frame

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furthest iv.got so far is using cpu particles with collision, but the dynamics of the particles look bad. for example need to add a sinewave movement to the particles, oh and another issue is even if.I got the field working, gpu particles dont support trail emitters, as they have to have a trail

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its basically like simulating beams of light which act like flowing water , that is interactable

bright panther
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Using a baked texture atlas won't give you interactivity. You'll literally have to program some custom stuff to get what you're wanting.

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I may add features like that in our upcoming plugin, but it probably won't be in time by the time you need it.

errant shuttle
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Anyone use PopcornFx in their project?

fossil swan
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"New: Added a Channel Mask material parameter, changeable at runtime and returns the selected channel of it's input." hnng

indigo jolt
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@errant shuttle i DID for a while....but it's really hard to quantify what PopcornFX adds to a project other than a lot of pre-made quality FX in one style + a heavy emphasis on being programmer-friendly INSTEAD of artist friendly

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it subtracts a lot of very basic functionality from a project - like particle collision and ease of referencing parameters and materials

errant shuttle
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Really because I haven't been able to find any programming documentation

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Maybe I'm just blind

indigo jolt
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it's basically a big "arrow to the knee" if you're a real VFX artist, but a delight to a programmer that wants lots of easy FX with no artists involved and minimal functionality with gameplay

errant shuttle
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really? our VFX artist is the one who requested we support it

indigo jolt
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i was the VFX artist that mistakenly requested another project support it

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then we started hitting limitations that were absurd

errant shuttle
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what kind of limitations?

indigo jolt
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particles do NOT collide with anything

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any beam data is useless since that needs to be controlled via Blueprints, not their own little C# type stuff

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their particle lights are a cruel tease since they don't export

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meaning you create particle lights, test it in there, then realize belatedly they aren't working and have to start all over to make them in Unreal

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which makes you ask - why was i using this? what feature did it enable me to do?

errant shuttle
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The example project has colliding particles

indigo jolt
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oh yes i know 😃

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but it also has a static environment collision

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those particles will always collide perfectly in THAT environment

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just not in any other

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it's cute

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they literally had to export their whole environment collision INTO popcornFX, then set that as the collision for the particles, then export out the particles with that one singular collision object as reference

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it's bizarre

errant shuttle
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hmmm

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I just created a new level and the particles are colliding

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ah I see, static collisions

indigo jolt
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it's not all bad - it does give you a lot of pre-made stuff

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if your goal is to take all their demo stuff and just "tweak it 20%" - sure

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but honestly a lot of vfx is very modular and i'm not a fan of an "all in one" solution that makes it less obvious where my parameter controls are

fossil swan
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siiiiigh, so stupid you cant set "Const Acceleration" to local space

indigo jolt
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i've wondered why constant acceleration has such limited features

fossil swan
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wonder what a good alternative is for my gpu particles

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drag plus more velocity it is hehe

indigo jolt
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yeah pretty much just velocity

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can't do velocity over life with gpu, which is annoying

fossil swan
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hope that all changes with nia

surreal willow
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@bright panther Ok, Thanks man will see what I can do, I think we will have to use CPU particles for now as they have more interactivity

fossil swan
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you cant spawn many of those though

surreal willow
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yep thats the issue, cpu particles are super expensive, and updating velocity frame by frame is hard

errant elbow
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May I ask if anyone knows how to keep 3D Widgets unaffected by Post Process Volumes?

sullen forge
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@fossil swan im definitely buying that polygonal VFX pack

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is exactly the kind of thing i need and can dissect

fossil swan
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I finished it today, need to do the whole screenshot thing and description crappage tonight and submit it.

sullen forge
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i buy a good deal of FX packs just to dissect it

fossil swan
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same

sullen forge
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i then tweak stuff a lot myself

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some of my final fx for games end up being parts of multiple packs

fossil swan
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I think after I submit this pack I'll go over my old ones and improve em a bit

tranquil rock
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I have a issue that I've been trying to figure out for a while. I'm fairly new to UE4 and don't have much experience with it. So my question is, how do you set up a plane static mesh to appear as though you are looking through a window? I've seen it done in several games in development but I've not yet been able to figure it out...

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Would that be here or would that be in the graphics

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channel?

fossil swan
tranquil rock
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Thank you

opal trellis
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I've been working on it and have the system mostly setup, but I cant seem to get the render texture mask to line up properly with the rain particle itself... 🤔

fossil swan
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need to add LOD's to 75 systems each with 5-10 emitters in em.. bleerghh

dapper zealot
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good luck

fossil swan
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33 to go. kill me now pl0x

opal trellis
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@fossil swan best way to do rain impact particles? eg could you have them in a spawn radius (say, a cube) and make sure they only spawn on a surface with a normal direction of up? is something like that even possible?

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jw since I know you're knowledgeable on particles 😃

fossil swan
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id either put it in the shader or post processing. no reason to add collision to that

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fake it

opal trellis
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good point, thanks!

indigo jolt
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don't listen to him, use collision for EVERYTHING. only poor people have less than 4 video cards these days

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going to have to bookmark that twitter link though....

celest jasper
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read his comment??

indigo jolt
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god that's a clever method

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i kinda wonder how it holds up at angles though

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i think he's got it set to pretty much always shape the droplets at a sort of 3/4th camera view

opal trellis
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ooo thats clever

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could do that too

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i am not sure about that second bit dopaaa

indigo jolt
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that would go into UV's somehwere

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what you have there is the generic setup for world-position-based UV's - great for tiling things when you don't want to fudge with UV stretching etc

surreal willow
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any workaround to get particle trails on gpu sprites?

surreal willow
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or is it possible to smooth the collision of particles on surfaces using cpu particles?

jolly moth
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morning, I have a challenge ahead of me....trying to spawn multiple instances of the same actor and colour each one according to a property set at time of spawn.
Think blocks coloured per temperature.
What would be a good way to go about this? I'm worried about creating hundreds of materials on the fly which I think would bog down my game.

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Was wondering about perhaps having a texture that is a gradient from green to red and shifting the UV coordinates for each actor, or am I overthinking this?

celest birch
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Seems like it could work. How would you determine the shift amount though? Seems like you would still need a dynamic instance to set the shift amount per actor

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@jolly moth

jolly moth
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@celest birch ...I'm not sure, not sure where to start so I thought I'd ask before going too far down the wrong path. When creating a dynamic material...does that create a new material in memory for each actor at runtime?

celest birch
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@jolly moth I'm not sure but I would assume so

fresh harness
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Seeing as their parameters can be changed at runtime, I'd assume dynamic material instances are the most expensive version of materials. I'm probably totally wrong and it doesn't matter though. heh

celest birch
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Yeah perfomance from worst to best would be Dynamic -> Constant -> Normal

fresh harness
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Ah cool. Hey, what's Constant? Instance?

celest birch
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Yeah just a regular material instance

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Can't change at runtime

fresh harness
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Nice. First time I've heard constant. Didnt know what the difference between constant and normal was.

celest birch
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They use the term constant in the doc. Cos the values are constant at runtime 🙂

fresh harness
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What's the diff between Constant and Normal?
I'd think setting the material on the mesh once on begin play, or in the constructor, to a constant instance would be the cheapest.
At least cheaper than a dynamic instance.

celest birch
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Constant is just a regular material instance. When I say normal, it just means a regular material that isn't an instance i.e when you open it, it opens the material editor

fresh harness
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Ah, gotcha sorry. Weird. I thought it'd be more like Dynamic > Normal > Constant then.

celest birch
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Material instance is more expensive to use than normal but I can't seem to find the thread on performance

fresh harness
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Got it. No sweat, I believe you. My assumptions have been corrected. No need to dig it up. Thanks!

celest birch
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Yeah I can't seem to find it 🤔 Basically, using 1000 of the normal material should be faster than using 1000 material instances of the normal material

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But once you start introducing other "normal" materials, there's a different cost as well

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Difference is probably negligible though. All in all, use instances where you can just to save on compile times

fossil swan
pine crystal
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So I have a question for you guys that may seem straight forward but I’m racking my brain over it. I have a movable actor that can be crafted and placed. Once placed the actor can be lit. In relation to the actor scene the light will not move only change intensity. The light component will not be added to the bp actor scene until after it won’t move in game any longer. In this scenario would stationary point light save performance or be treated no differently than a movable point light?

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This is a VR game so every perf save I can make matters

pine crystal
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I’m assuming a static mesh fire material would be cheaper than particles right?

fossil swan
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quite a few factors that would affect that

indigo jolt
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i think it's safe to say "generally yes"

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make the fire 10,000+ triangles and translucent, and multiple shells overlapping...and use tessellation and world offset animation...then NO

pine crystal
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Haha

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I’m thinking just a cone with a wind foilage, panning mask

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Type shader

indigo jolt
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sounds legit

pine crystal
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Unlit

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With emission

fossil swan
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this unlit material is lit yo

pine crystal
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I’ll share a screenshot of the mat in thanks for the feedback

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Maybe a asset download if its popping lol

opal trellis
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hey guys, how would you go about blurring a texture sample? I currently have one with values either 0 or 1 (nothing inbetween) and need to make it blurred/smooth to go inbetween those values instead, sort of like a feather operation in photoshop

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and for certain reasons cannot use spiral blur (as it uses a texture object)

fossil swan
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there is some function on the forums for it, but its expensive af. easiest is justto blur it in photoshop

analog onyx
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There was a spiral blur mat function in the engine too

opal trellis
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@fossil swan @analog onyx unfortunately neither of those options will work, the texture is created ingame and updated dynamically, so it needs to be something in the material from a texture sample (a render target)

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the texture is mapped with world position to the UV's, so i think(?) a texture object is out of the question

pine crystal
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You guys ever did anything with hiding foilage if overlapped

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Like if something is placed on top of it

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During gameplay

celest jasper
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only LODs with less geometry, so yeah, manual adjustments

analog onyx
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@opal trellis Questions like yours arise from lack of understand what texture sample material expression outputs. Instead of stating that something will not work, you'd better describe, what you are actually intending to achieve. It will usually be more productive for you.

opal trellis
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@analog onyx Like I stated I'm trying to blur a texture sample. I actually did get that to work however by using a radial blur node by using a texture object rather then sample, which so far is working

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However, I now need to flip the output to correct the mask, but 1-x doesn't seem to be giving me the correct output

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I'm not sure why, but 1-x doesn't seem to be doing anything at all actually. It just outputs white, rather than the inverse image 🤔

opal trellis
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ended up getting it to work. had to make a custom map to range function, seems that spiral blur only outputs like a max of 0.1 or something strange \

pine crystal
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@fossil swan This unlit mat is lit yo lol

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Its on the bottom of a sphere mesh but it fakes a fire pretty well from all angles

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and it seems to be pretty cheap

fossil swan
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looks like one of the math-materials from the procedural math pack thingy

warm lintel
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hmm there is actully acceration but it a force :>

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this script adds acceleration to particule

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as varable

pine crystal
rotund quartz
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@warm lintel the idea is that the solver deals with integrating forces to velocities, and velocities to positions as you'd expect in any regular dynamics framework, and that forces can be applied in different ways (constant acceleration is just one of those possibilities);
of course you can roll your own, as you did, but it's not a requirement ;)
Be sure to watch our GDC tech talk for a deeper dive into the ideas behind it!

warm lintel
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Yea i didn't look on all modules didn't noticed acceleration force :p

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definitly gonna watch GDC talk ;]

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You too @fossil swan right? :p

pine crystal
opal trellis
surreal willow
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anyone know if the GDC talk will be streamed? and if there is anywhere I can watch them

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pretty sure the GDC site/subscription doesn't: stream stuff but adds it to the vault afterwards

pine crystal
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If only VR could afford the particle one I made

analog onyx
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@opal trellis Rain occlusion? You'd be far better off using 4-tap hardware PCF for that, instead of spiral blur.

celest birch
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anyone tag me here?

analog onyx
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I blame discord bug

celest birch
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ah

mortal lily
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@warm lintel Can you spawn particles on a mesh and mask them using a texture mask?

warm lintel
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you can get mesh data to script so i guess yes

mortal lily
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Neat! i'll have to give it a try and see if you can also use texture masks. Would be nice for some effects i have in mind hehe

warm lintel
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but you cant attach skeletal mesh yet it seem

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so i dont know

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if it works

opal trellis
#

@analog onyx mmm can you give an example of that? a quick google search does not come up with much in terms of ue4?

#

(no knowledge on what that is)

#

the spiral blur is only used on the ground material, but yeah efficiency is always good 😛

sullen forge
#

i experimented with porting shadertoy into ue4

#

porting some fire simulation/cloud thing

celest birch
#

Ooh that's cool. Is it volumetric?

sullen forge
#

yes

#

its this shadertoy

#

ported

#

its a huge hack

celest birch
#

Are you just using the noise function?

sullen forge
#

and i mean huge

#

btw that noise texture is not even needed

#

just there for ease of porting

celest birch
#

That effect looks cool af

#

What's in your noise custom node?

sullen forge
#

its SUUUUUUUUUUPER laggy

#

oh, thats the porting trick

celest birch
#

Porting trick?

#

Hard to appreciate in GIF form with all the banding 😅

sullen forge
#

custom nodes copypaste code into a function

#

you can take advantage of the dumb copypasting

#

by doing something similar to a SQL injection

#

essentially, you write a custom node with the code:

#

return 0.0; } float function1(){} float function2() {} etc

#

and then, in a second node, you can call the functions

#

to make sure that unreal copypastes the top node before the other node, you need to put them in an add like this

celest birch
#

Oh what I thought you meant by porting trick was some efficient way to do 3D noise

#

But this function trick is interesting. Is it documented anywhere?

#

The only trick I knew of was chaining custom nodes together but you have to copy the parameters to both nodes

sullen forge
#

cleaned it up a bit so its clearer

celest birch
#

Oh fk that's clever

#

Can I use it to declare global variables too? 😮

sullen forge
#

yes

#

this is the trick

#

by doing return 1.0; }

#

then i can write whatever code

celest birch
#

This is brilliant

sullen forge
#

and it will be "global"

celest birch
#

Thank you very much. I'm going to start using this

#

😃

sullen forge
#

@celest birch this is hacky to a ridiculous degree

#

and might break if you try to have it portable

mental quiver
#

That's pretty funny though that you can just overload it essentially 😛

sullen forge
#

@mental quiver indeed

#

its becouse the custom node is implemented like this

# 
        //literally copypaste the text box
}```
#

so im doing:

# 
       return 0; }
float myfunction(){
//whatever
} ```
#

this is how much of a massive hack it is

mental quiver
#

Yeah, cool find though!

analog onyx
#

You should be able to include a standalone shader file from custom node too.

sullen forge
#

#include should definitely work

spare hare
#

Is Niagara working in 4.19?

#

I'd like to get started with it, but dunno what exactly needs to be done to create a little flae for example

warm lintel
#

@sullen forge did that before.... in UE3 ;p and from glslsandbox as shadertoy didn't exist back then

lament helm
#

What's a resource efficient way to color my particle systems depending on the material hit? IE: If I hit a yellow wall, I can reliably get the color from that and assign it to a particle parameter.

#

I've investigated the "Get UV Coord from Hit" stuff and found it to be a bit heavy. I'm currently trying to find a way to average the color of the material hit and use that.

indigo jolt
#

use surface types to pick between various particle systems or particle parameters

#

with surface types it's pretty routine for wood surfaces to trigger one particle system and stone to trigger another etc

lament helm
#

I thought about that, I use surface types already but for instance: I have a tile surface that can be any number of colors. Say I want to use this system for bullet impact effects, this solution wouldn't be tenable.

cerulean pecan
surreal willow
#

excited, hope they upload the talk soon after the event

#

and also nice work @sullen forge didnt know you could create nodes with custom hlsl code, thats great

warm lintel
#

dont the gonna stream it?

#

same as new audio system talk last year?

karmic kraken
#

they said that all the talks will be streamed

warm lintel
crystal pasture
#

Is it just me or UE4 Particle collision doesn't work in Simulation ?>

indigo jolt
#

it often doesn't work in play/simulation due to "max collision distance" not being set high enough

#

it's a very stupid bug in Unreal 4 that's been around a while. they set the distance really low by default, then falsely demonstrate functional collision in editor...until you hit play, then they actually show what REALLY happens

drowsy lynx
#

(when you click a character, you see that theres a number of fx within the package)

fossil swan
#

mentioned a few hundred times on this channel alone hehe

ashen stump
#

xD

indigo jolt
#

we're all pretty excited. right now some mad genius is stripping out all the gameplay except item pickups, removing most of the characters and skills, and re-labelling it as a "survival game"

fossil swan
#

the first part is already done, so godspeed to this mad genius :p

fossil swan
celest jasper
#

just loading Paragon Sample, Gagdet is the guy with the blackhole, right? ^^

fossil swan
indigo jolt
#

i'm kinda curious how this stuff will match up to stuff like Riot's LoL vfx contests

#

which is sort of unfair - since half of those things are totally performance-implausible

#

but still, they tend to be pretty good

celest jasper
#

I don't like these vfx, too noise for my toon eyes ;P

#

and yeah, some of them are incredible heavy

indigo jolt
#

i like the shockwave at the bottom

celest jasper
#

oh, and some of them are like .5 sec, you can't even see what's going on

indigo jolt
#

the rest does confuse me though, why does that rubble come up vertically rather than kinda stabbing out - is that thing a power up or a damage attack?

#

regardless, i like how it's tech-heavy

#

i appreciate that about Epic - always using VFX and shaders that promote the engine tech rather than doing things the easy/obvious way

#

it's good for inspiring others

fossil swan
#

been going trough half of it, and its actually all rather simple. besides a few things its all rather straightforward.

#

once you know what each effect does, its often the easy/most obvious way

indigo jolt
#

cheap but technically clever

#

i remember learning all i know about material tech by using Unreal Tournament assets in UDK 3

#

feel bad that current gen ue4 ppl haven't had that stuff to reference

#

this release will really help get people jumpstarted

analog onyx
#

It is quite interesting to go through the particle effects of paragon to be fair.

indigo jolt
#

would be crazy not to

fresh harness
#

As of late I've noticed a few people mentioning Niagara - as if they're using it. Is it in 4.19? What's in 4.19 looks like cascade to me.

fresh harness
#

nm: i take it people are just talking about it coming in 4.20 sorry

spare hare
#

you can use Niagara in 4.19, you just have to enable the plugin. You can then add Niagara Emitters/Scripts etc in the FX category.

#

but Niagara is still crashy

fossil swan
#

Alex just told me the vfx for the minions in paragon where made with niagara, so.. well.. you can download em

mint warren
#

Hi, I'm working on a firework/confetti particle effect for collecting a coin in an endless runner
When I use burst to spawn the particles, it won't follow the player
I think it's because the emitter spawns the particles at the player's current location and since it's a burst, the particles don't follow the player as he runs forward
Is there any way to overcome this?
(I asked in physics section and I was suggested to ask here instead)

obtuse seal
#

@mint warren You'll want to attach the particle emitter to your character so that it follows their movement.

mint warren
obtuse seal
#

As well your particles will need to use local space

#

I forgot lol

#

"local space" is an option in the "required" category of your emitter

mint warren
#

Ohhh let me try that! Thanks a lot!

#

Omg it works! Thanks a lot!

gray inlet
#

apparently they attached this to the camera

#

also this mesh is part of it

#

any reason they didn't use a post process material with a mask?

heavy quartz
#

maybe it was just easier that way

drowsy lynx
#

The inner area is cut out. this means those pixels dont have to be calculated. if you use a mask, the pixels are still calculated even though they are 100% transparent.

#

with a tech like this you save many many calculations in your vertex shader.

indigo jolt
#

that's clever

gray inlet
#

post process materials operate on the pixel shader though, don't they?

pliant atlas
#

WHERE BEING WATCHED BY A CLASS BOYS

drowsy lynx
#

yes, you iterate over ever single pixel on the screen and modify it via post process material

gray inlet
#

yeah, my question why particle with a mesh vs post process material

#

the latter would be my first impulse

#

I am just looking for best practices and found this

drowsy lynx
#

because the mesh has a hole where you wouldnt see the 100% translucent particles anyway. it seems to be an optimization

gray inlet
#

also on another note

#

there is a preview for post process materials now

#

❤

fossil swan
#

I wish we could preview stuff that uses depth-fade when using the node previewer. anything even thinking about touching depthfade doesnt show up.

indigo jolt
#

i can sorta half see it in material instances...

#

but yes it's useless

warm lintel
#

here my video on new things in Niagara in 4.19

indigo jolt
#

clicking

winged nymph
#

how do you reorder emitters

fossil swan
#

arrow keys on keyboard

#

left/right

winged nymph
#

ohhh

#

thanks

#

that needs to be like a toolbar button or something I didn't think it was possible

#

was about to export all my emitters, delete then reexport them

fossil swan
#

yea took me a while to find out about it as well

#

then again, same with spacebar hehe

winged nymph
#

whats spacebar do

#

restarts in level

#

ya that's pretty useful too, but at least it's on the toolbar

#

I've been working on making a ribbon effect to trail behind a moving sphere, but no matter what I do there's a gap. so I had to solve it by adding another emitter that just emits a tiny single really short lasting particle to fill the gap

#

so hacky, probably better ways to deal with this, but it has to get done

fossil swan
#

that problem seems to be more present in preview than during actual game

winged nymph
#

this is during simulation

#

the red circle is the gap filling particle

fossil swan
#

color over life (its alpha) and the texture are proper?

winged nymph
#

ya, it starts at .25

#

for the alpha

#

I've been troubleshootign this problem for like 3 days

fossil swan
#

care to show me material and aol?

winged nymph
fossil swan
#

you dont need that 0 input one sincethe 0.25 one is identical

winged nymph
#

uses the soft one, but I've tried it with the hard one too and samei ssue

#

oh ya thats true

fossil swan
#

ive only had that issue when I hit stutters in framerate, not sure whats causing it for some ppl

winged nymph
#

it runs at 60fps

#

the ball is going pretty fast though, like 800 units for its initial speed

#

what is the aol?

fossil swan
#

can you show me the ribbon settings?

#

alpha over life. but you already showed me that hehe

winged nymph
fossil swan
#

recalc every frame can sometimes help.
Spawn innitial particle sometimes as well.
but yea, imho if you can hide that part with a small hiding mesh and it works, it works.

#

ship it :p

winged nymph
#

with recalc on

#

ya, I think it's just how ribbon works with physic actors

fossil swan
#

ive made balls with ribbons (odd sentence hehe) before, work fine most of the cases.
but I do agree, ribbons can be rather odd

#

lemme see if I still have the project

#

loading

winged nymph
#

hmm

fossil swan
#

material is a simple horizontal tiling gradient

winged nymph
#

you'd think you'd need Clip Source Segment off?

fossil swan
#

¯_(ツ)_/¯

winged nymph
#

same result for me

#

with those settings

fossil swan
#

odd

#

#ribbons hehe

indigo jolt
#

@winged nymph you gotta add like 0.5 to one of the UV directions so the texture is more on one side

winged nymph
#

where do you do that

#

Macro UV?

indigo jolt
#

the goal here is - you wanna get the texture jammed up mostly on one side

void flower
#

Hi guys, anyone know if there is a flare particle on the MP ?

#

Like this?

#

I'll give someone 10$ paypal if they can make me this ^ alex

indigo jolt
#

lol i'd feel guilty taking $10 for that

#

pretty sure that's the default smoke material emitter with the color over life set to like 90, 50, 10, at 0 seconds, then like 9, 5, 0 at 0.25 seconds and 0.5, 0.5, 0.5 at 1 seconds

void flower
#

I suck at particles :\

junior matrix
#

Just take the $10 ballsproblem!

celest birch
frank oracle
#

So I made a simple cloaking effect with refraction for a character

#

But I don't want to just swap the material when the cloak is on

#

I want to interpolate between materials

#

but I have no idea how to do so

surreal bay
#

I see a MatLayerBlend node in the material editor

#

I bet that's the way to go

#

I see it has an alpha input, so probably pick the first material for input of 0, and the second for input of 1

#

and a mix for values inbetween

#

so probably you can hook that up to a variable parameter that you drive from blueprint

#

*MatLayerBlend_Standard

frank oracle
#

I'll try that, thanks

surreal bay
#

I have a question too 😛 I need a Material node that rotate the input, similar to Rotator, but that it just apply a fixed rotation (not a rotation over time, like Rotator does). How is such node called? :S

#

nvm, found it. Is CustomRotator

winged nymph
#

Spawn per unit can only ever be used in local space?

#

like local to the emitter, if you move the emitter it doesn't count towards the per unit scalar

surreal bay
#

in a material, how do you obtain the opposite vector for a vector expressed as a color?

#

I multiplied by -1 but I am somehow getting the wrong answer 🤔

junior matrix
#

What is the opposite vector for a color? Do you want the complementary color?

surreal bay
#

No, if my color vector represent the Forward Vector of my mesh, I want it to turn it into the BackVector so to say

#

the negate of the forward vector

#

is that the complementary color? I have no idea 😄

#

Well, for now I solved by adding another vector parameter and using the node NegateVector in blueprint, and passing that

#

though I would prefer to do it all inside the material, from the color version of the forward vector

winged nymph
#

Complementary

#

you could use scale color

#

change it to constant

#

and input -1 in all values

#

actually that would be somerthing different I think

junior matrix
#

A vector, [0.7,0.7,0.1] and its -1, [-0.7,-0.7,-0.1] are opposites. However, the latter doesn't make for much of a color.

winged nymph
#

that seems like somethign you should make a parameter?

#

the opposite of red isn't -255 red it's 255 green + 72 Blue

surreal bay
#

in that wheel you linked, the opposite or red is green... so this probably require some serious math wizardy to be solved. xD I just go with letting the Blueprint node handle it then, don't worry guys 😃

winged nymph
#

ya but it isnt just green

#

it's green and some blue

surreal bay
#

ah, you're right, didn't noticed

winged nymph
#

I wonder if this color wheel is controlled with CSS

#

then you could extract the math

surreal bay
#

Well... though it seems like in that image, if you put a "vertex" on red, green, blue, then rotating is just making the numbers in the colors flow

#

from one vertex to the other

#

right?

#

like if you go from red counterclockwise toward green, what you remove from red goes into green

#

I think

junior matrix
#

To be clear:
Positions, directions and colors are not the same thing.
They all can be stored as vectors, but treating them the same way will give the wrong results.

surreal bay
#

so at 0.5 red and 0.5 green, you got yellow

junior matrix
#

Negate vector doesn't do anything with color. It literally is just -Vector.

celest birch
#

Can confirm. Back vector is literally forward vector * -1

surreal bay
#

yes but blueprint has the Vector to LinearColor node

winged nymph
#

ya you can't OneMinus color

celest birch
#

Yes you can

#

Vector to LinearColor doesn't really do anything

winged nymph
celest birch
#

Both are structs made up of floats anyway

junior matrix
#

Complementary colors are not relevant in this discussion. I only mentioned them because there was some ambiguity in Marcus' original question.

winged nymph
#

oh I only skimmed the original question

celest birch
#

Btw OneMinus and multiplying by -1 is not the same thing

winged nymph
#

oh I didnt realize that

celest birch
#

e.g. 1 - 0.5 = 0.5 while 0.5 * -1 = -0.5

surreal bay
#

I am fairly sure that *-1 of the LinearColor version of the Forward version is not doing the same thing of getting the NegatedVector from blueprint and passing it with the VectorToLinear color transformation. This is because I am swapping them now, and the one from blueprint behaves correctly, while doing the minus one on the linear color version of the forward vector in the material editor, give the wrong behaviour

#

and I am using them to guide vertex displacement, so the wrong behavious is quite clear 😛

#

-> Btw OneMinus and multiplying by -1 is not the same thing

#

oh wait 😐

celest birch
#

Need to multiply by -1 not OneMinus

surreal bay
#

wait wait xD What does OneMinus does?! O_O

junior matrix
#

OneMinus = (1 - X)

celest birch
#

See my example ^

surreal bay
#

You're right, LinearColor ForwardVector * -1 gives the correct behaviour

#

thanks! 😄

winged nymph
#

xD

surreal bay
#

a new pitfall learned

winged nymph
#

is the Actor Collison module a bit buggy?

#

I got it working on a stationary Emitter, but when I try to make it work for a moving emitter it doesnt work

#

and the stationary emitter's collisions don't work when simulated

#

but they do when not playing or when played in viewport

#

???

#

oh wow, it was because the EventReceiver emitter was set to use local space

surreal bay
#

In the material editor is possible to take a reference to a named parameter o_O?

#

I just need it to keep order, instead of running 1000 wires out of a single parameter

celest birch
#

You should be able to rename it to the same parameter

#

And if you change the value on one, the others should also change

#

@surreal bay

surreal bay
#

nice! Thanks 😃

#

There is a way to drive the Panner node SpeedX and SpeedY settings trough variables? Would be cool if I could make a texture pan in the direction opposed to the character running direction

#

Well not only cool, is actually the effect I want to achieve 😄

#

Ah, I see how it is, that's what the Speed input node is for

rare fulcrum
#

Does anyone know how to integrate Nvidia Hairworks with UE4 (Unreal 4.18)
(Note: Please don't provide me the general link for the hairworks, I want to integrate with 4.18 like I said above)

mortal lily
#

@raoul#5339 The official ue4 hairworks branch should be an good starting point. You'd have to do integration to 4.18 on your own tho as said branch is 4.16.3 at the moment.

noble steeple
#

anyone in here with a spare moment to help me with a snow particle system ? 😃

#

the particle system is setup already - but i need to somehow parent it to my actor so it follows the character around

indigo jolt
#

find character blueprint. double click it. open it. find snow particle system in content browser, drag it over to the upper left part of the blueprint somewhere near where it says something like "collison" or "character mesh" or something like that

#

change from event graph view to viewport tab

#

click on that snow particle system. drag vertically if needed or whatever to make it appropriately "high" above character

#

if you want to de-activate the snow or re-activate snow then you'll just drag from particle system into event graph and start doing some blueprint work - whether it's to activate/deactivate from a button click, or some other event

gray inlet
#

does Niagara support UI/screen space particles?

#

still struggling with a system I am working on :/

fossil swan
#

@gray inlet I asked for screen-space location particles, if they added that then yes.

gray inlet
#

that would be awesome

#

so many times where I wanted to juice up UI and had to resort to dirty hacks

serene burrow
#

A question: is there a way to create very simple line trail behind bullet in unreal engine?

#

Unity had thing called trail renderer

#

when I used it

winged nymph
#

Ribbon trail

fossil swan
#

if its a straight bullet can also use a sprite or mesh

warm lintel
#

@gray inlet i didnt seen anything like that in 4.19, i think this something that would be needed to be implmented in Slate :> But you can code particles to follow camera

unique tulip
#

Ribbon trails would do it, if your bullet/projectile actor was an actor, and not a trace sort of solution. Even then, you could probably have the ribbon trail follow the path of the trace with some magick.

fossil swan
#

again though, mesh or sprite is way cheaper.

unique tulip
#

^ Luos is right

#

Is everyone waiting for the Niagara talk on the GDC stream?

fossil swan
#

nah

#

OFCOURSE

unique tulip
#

I feel like that was a dumb question.

fossil swan
#

REEEE

unique tulip
#

lmao

charred stream
#

where's the stream?

fossil swan
charred stream
#

oh of course lol. Thanks

unique tulip
#

You snappy s.o.b

#

They're late, dammit. S'okay though, hopefully they fix audio issues and squash any presentation bugs.

winged nymph
#

how do I make a reflective particle that can alpha over life

unique tulip
#

I was about to say that list on the Niagara stream wasn't long enough, then got to "And the list goes on and on...", lol

#

Oh my. Custom HLSL nodes in Niagara graph? Weeeee

winged nymph
#

Niagara looks really awesome, but gonna be lots of homework to do

surreal willow
#

just tuned in a lot of awesome stuff so far

#

data interface really sweet

winged nymph
#

ya Cascade is pretty weak on interfacing

surreal willow
#

yeah there was a plugin but it was pretty limited to the set particle parameters

#

woo houdini support

winged nymph
#

100% importing from Houdini?

surreal willow
#

dunno probably the baked anims not the nodes

winged nymph
#

showing the wrong screen

#

ok thats amazing

celest jasper
#

da f<3 was that demo?

#

they exploded a skeletal mesh, then switched the skeletal mesh and had the explosion play back, basically?

winged nymph
#

they exploded it by sampling areas of the mesh into colored particles same time it swapped from the mesh to the particle mesh

#

Im not sure about that flickering though

surreal willow
#

I missed the first half, is there some kind of ribbon data type for GPU emitters now?

warm lintel
#

in 4.19 ribbon is particules conencted with ribbon, there ribbon id parameter which i susspected defines which particules are connected with ribbon, but it didn't work, or else i did somethign wrong

#

ofcorse this might be changed in 4.20

#

in 4.18 only sprite worked

surreal willow
#

in cascade cant connect ribbons to gpu particles

#

only supported on cpu particles

#

but I saw some demo of some orb which had particles with trails rotating around it, mb they were gpu

fossil swan
#

it works differently now or well.. soon

warm lintel
#

you mean diffrent from what i seen in 4.19?

surreal willow
#

no idea, only did tests in 4.18, but they said that 4.19 is months behind current development

#

they branched it a while ago and 4.19 is closer to 4.18 niagara than 4.20

warm lintel
#

well they added few things :>

#

between 4.18 and 4.19

surreal willow
#

thats good

charred stream
#

I wonder if there's a way to specify global constants, for consistent color scheming across multiple particle systems without having to set parameters.

junior matrix
#

Material parameter collections
A global container for material parameters

fresh harness
charred stream
#

@junior matrix I mean for the emitters. I guess with niagra you'd just specify a new data source and pull from gameinstance or whatever.

rotund quartz
#

@charred stream something that wasn't covered in the talk due to lack of time was Niagara parameter collections that allow you to do just that - you can pull any parameter from a collection (e.g. color for all your fire emitters) and then change them all at once by changing the color in the collection

#

Hope you all liked the talk and what we showed!

charred stream
#

@rotund quartz that sounds perfect, thanks! The whole thing looks excellent to be honest.

celest birch
#

Was the talk recorded? I missed it 😩

rotund quartz
#

link goes directly to the Niagara section

celest birch
#

Thank you!

winged nymph
#

I hope there's a prelim release sooner than 4.20

#

I just want to get ahead on figuring it out

fresh harness
#

What's the difference between Size by Life+ and Size by Life? Don't see any difference in the settings.

unique tulip
#

@fresh harness - The niagara implementation in 4.19 is a bit outdated to what was shown in the GDC talk, and what's slated for the 4.20 preview

fresh harness
#

Got it. Thanks!

gray inlet
#

in cascade the + indicated a refrence to another module

#

so two modules could share identical settings

#

and by tweaking one, you also tweaked the other

#

not sure if they keep that in niagara

unique tulip
#

Check out that hour talk from the GDC stream, and you'll know quite a bit about Niagara 😉

fossil swan
#

every time i hear "mesh trail" i get a little moist

fossil swan
#

being able to convert cascade effects somewhat to niagara is hnng.

mental quiver
#

@fossil swan Niagara VFX pack when? kappa

fossil swan
#

4.21 :p

mental quiver
obtuse seal
#

So I've been playing around with this tutorial on baking textures using noise in UE4 https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/getting-the-most-out-of-noise-in-ue4 and everything's great except for the life of me I can't replicate the caustics texture result. Granted there's not specific guidance on getting to it but I suspect someone here might be familiar with this?

Unreal Engine
Getting the Most Out of Noise in UE4

UE4 has had material based procedural noise for some time now, but most users have had to limit their usage of it due to its high performance cost. We have addressed these needs in Unreal Engine 4.13, and here's how you can get the most out of it.

celest jasper
#

the question is... what are 6 octaves?

#

if I just use Levels 6, it looks broken

obtuse seal
#

Lol, I'm sure it makes perfect sense to the graphics mastermind that is Ryan Brucks

celest jasper
#

if I use 6 octaves = 6 * 8 = 48

obtuse seal
#

I can get the desired result for cracked desert floor but the caustics seems impossible

celest jasper
#

it gives me 'something'

#

did you try recreating it in 4.13?

#

and also, which type of gradient did you use?

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cause ya know, there is 3 gradients actually 😄

obtuse seal
#

@celest jasper one moment and I'll screenshot some results

celest jasper
#

great docs, like always ;P

obtuse seal
#

lul

#

why's this so hard to edit :(

#

ayy I did it!

celest jasper
#

a poorly documented side project with stupid scalar parameter names

obtuse seal
#

Yeah the reference param names and what Brucks refers to are entirely different lol

#

Anyway that produces a good voronoi noise, I haven't quite figured out how to add noise to it without getting some annoying noise inside the "bubbles"

celest jasper
#

did you recreate the materials yet?

obtuse seal
#

@celest jasper I can do a cheap imitation of the "desert floor crackling" but it lacks the noise added in step 2, still working on getting that right

#

Not entirely sure how Ryan Brucks did the gradient noise step but I assume it's just 1 level

#

I should note that in 4.18 you don't need to divide the highpass offset by 2048, evidently something changed since the guide was written

#

brb

celest jasper
#

crap

#

how is that gif app called

#

where it's uploading directly to their site

#

gyazo

#

I'm no marble expert

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But I think this is going into the right direction, right?

#

@obtuse seal

obtuse seal
#

@celest jasper it's getting there, good work

obtuse seal
#

After some more number manipulation I think the desert floor crackle effect is looking pretty close to the original, still getting some lines cutting across the tiles which is due to the gradient noise in the high pass, still not sure how to clear that out entirely

warm lintel
#

@fossil swan so what you think of niagara scripting? :> you think you will be able to handle it? :p

fossil swan
#

probably not hehe but we'll see

mortal lily
#

the wizard speaks

indigo jolt
#

i'm absolutely terrified of it

warm lintel
#

Well it is very similar to tick ;p

indigo jolt
#

when Ryan Brucks steps up and makes a 10 minute "quick and easy" demonstration of how to do some kind of super advanced compound effect with gameplay integration included...i shall watch this video

#

so far no one has demonstrated anything more complicated than "burst stuff in all directions"

fossil swan
#

the main awesomeness is its just cascade on steroids, with added benefit of being able to make your own modules, and you have "cascade instances" to say it in somewhat laymen's terms.

warm lintel
#

only thing people may have trouble understand is parameter maps

fossil swan
#

Olaf reading this will probably slap me silly but meh :p

indigo jolt
#

like if someone shows how it can do branching, photo-realistic beam-based lightning that can be dynamically cast from a player controller to varying targets of varying lengths that would be kinda impressive. or if it did some projectile-type go-to-target action with adjustible target-loss graphs or something

#

if it's not making hard problems less hard....i gotta wonder what the point is

fossil swan
#

I think once you getthe hang of it, and you gain a collection of modules, it should be fairly easy

warm lintel
#

Luos how about we will do hangout when 4.20 is out? :>

fossil swan
#

yea for sure

indigo jolt
#

well i hope so, i think i'll probably hang back a smidgen and wait on other people to demonstrate the value

warm lintel
#

on preview? :p

fossil swan
#

well, besides it not being stable for at least another few ue4 versions, odds are itll take a while before clients etc really adopt it for games unless they just start out

#

thats gonna be an annoying transition. one client being cascade, the other niagara.

#

i wonder when that point comes where I am like FFUUUU CASCADE

warm lintel
#

Didn they planed conversion tool? :>

#

i kind of remeber to hear about it long time ago

gray inlet
#

they said: "not in 4.20" last night

#

for the conversion tool

fossil swan
#

yea, but eventually

karmic kraken
#

i hope there will be enough modules to get you started so you don't have to build the most basic stuff yourself first

gray inlet
#

they talked about that yesterday

#

they said they want to do that for 4.20

#

majority of work is all the basic modules

karmic kraken
#

ah, cool, havent finished watching the niagara stream yet

gray inlet
#

a guy also asked for 2D/UI particles

#

and apparently, it's on their list

warm lintel
#

i can show you what is in 4.19 but there deffinitly missing a lot

karmic kraken
#

your video is already on my to watch list, just hadnt time yet :/

warm lintel
fossil swan
#

im finally 3/4th into watching and taking apart all the paragon vfx hehe

warm lintel
#

this is moduels on spawn

#

spread is mine, set parameters is moduels to set invidual parameters in parameter map

#

so oyu can apply simple dynamic inputs etc

#

yea lifetime and uncategorized are my stuff :p

karmic kraken
#

hope i will have time to dive in after we shipped our milestone on monday

fossil swan
#

not even half of all emitters in this one effect

indigo jolt
#

whoa

#

why so few??? i use 20 times as many just for a single spark on a mobile title

fossil swan
#

hehe biggest emitter in paragon. 67

indigo jolt
#

i don't like making particles move, so i render a new one frame by frame for every location i want it to go, all with bursts set with micro-second time variations

#

just like all normal people do

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so what exactly is that emitter doing?

fossil swan
#

ill record it in a sec

indigo jolt
#

i'm going to bet my money that it's something "liquidy"

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but i'm open to being wrong

fossil swan
#

nah, massive explosion

karmic kraken
#

holy shit😱

indigo jolt
#

ah

fossil swan
#

funny thing is, its only one system out of three probably spawned at same time

#

that small bright dot is about the size of a player

celest jasper
#

Seismic Charges

#

Standby

fossil swan
#

the weird red lasers seem to be disoriented. they should be chunks getting sucked into the core really fast

#

not sure whats causing the offset. perhaps since they are for the cores in paragon they are set to their original height? iunno

celest jasper
#

I played 2 rounds of paragon and was glad I could refund, so... dunno

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¯_(ツ)_/¯

fossil swan
#

played a few rounds, but I had the luck to have recieved it for free.

#

this on other hand is a goldmine

#

only in my wildest dreams could I imagine taking these effects apart

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which is why ive been doing so for the last 4 days hehe

celest jasper
#

wildest dreams? I thought that's Dragonball FighterZ?

fossil swan
#

nah, that be naruto. but thats a tier above paragon for me

karmic kraken
#

i kind of hoped that they would release the paragon assets for free, after i found out they gonna kill the game but i thought it would be at least one year from now

fossil swan
#

and that I know for sure I'd never be able to take apart myself

celest jasper
#

yeah, japanese companies are not into giving company stuff away

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PROTECT THE IP

fossil swan
#

though the next naruto is on ue4, so who knows. (if the same vfx artists are working on it)

karmic kraken
#

yeah, this games have some amazing VFX

fossil swan
#

think ive watched that one at least 20 times by now

karmic kraken
#

😂

fossil swan
karmic kraken
#

i also liked the bayonetta stuff, even though it was only the first game and it was on ps3 back then

fossil swan
#

yea for sure. same with the devil may cry stuff

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one of the vfx artists who worked on that is actually somewhat active on realtimevfx.com

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and if im correct the uncharted vfx person is one of the lead --if not THE lead-- guy running the website

karmic kraken
#

havent visited it for months even though its really cool, just too busy with work >.<

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yeah i think he is running it

celest jasper
#

they are still behind cgwell though ;P

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i want that membership man!!

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so bad

fossil swan
#

its quite the maze, even if you have a membership hehe

celest jasper
#

uh... what?!

fossil swan
#

rando paragon effect

celest jasper
#

😅

#

oh...

fossil swan
#

with and without textures

celest jasper
#

lul

fossil swan
#

you'd think its just a sprite and a few sparks hehe

celest jasper
#

yeah, the mesh movement makes total sense kappa

#

no idea what's happening

#

wish I had a proper computer, my cpu is melting when I open Paragon assets

indigo jolt
#

it's kinda funny how blatant the use of basic "cloud noise" is on that little blue impact explosion

fossil swan
#

k, Riktor, Serath, Sevarog, shinbi, and twinblast to go. ill do those tomorrow

#

after that I might pick one effect I'd like to recreate and do so

karmic kraken
#

my plan is to recreate some of the "infamous: second son" stuff for some time now, maybe i will try it with niagara and on the coming vacation

celest jasper
#

yup, that has some sick stuff, stupid ps4 exclusive though, can't play and see the effect while playing myself

fossil swan
#

loved those effects

karmic kraken
#

yeah, the talk is awesome that's where i got the idea

fossil swan
#

< afk

celest jasper
#

all those procedural fluid/disintegration stuff, I want to see it happen on my screen when I press a button

warm lintel
#

they uploading yestoday talks 😃 still dont see niagara thru :p

#

gifed

winged nymph
#

does anyone have an idea why my meshes don't have a material in my scene, but they do in cascade

#

actually they don't have a material in cascade, but they do in the mesh data's mesh parameter

#

hmm apparently I never applied my material changes

#

Is Collision (Scene Depth) supported to Mesh Data types?

stark dust
#

Hey guys,
I was wondering:
What's the best practice for spawning particles on a very large scale ? (I'm thinking ambiant air particles on a large open level for exemple)
Set initial location & spawn rate to an exagerrately large range ?

gray inlet
#

depends on what numbers you are talking about

#

you can have one large particle system

#

preferably GPU particles

#

oder several smaller ones, so they can be culled

#

or

#

just attach one of them to the camera

#

depending on what game you are making

indigo jolt
#

generally best to attach to camera

#

you can't see a rain drop 50+ yards away and any particle location module that covers several square miles will not be able to cull particles via LOD for you because you're always going to be same distance from emitter

#

if you could actually cull particles based on particle distance from camera that would be one thing - but you can only cull visibility, which does nothing for efficiency

#

so you have to cull based on distance from particle system itself instead, which means making your emitter relate to your camera

#

you could get around this by making a giant grid of weather particle systems via blueprint so you'd constantly be walking in and out of various particle system LOD ranges

#

that is inadvisable

stark dust
#

Thanks a lot guys !

winged nymph
#

last night I made a coin particle system that spits out dimes, pennies, nickels and quarters as meshes but I couldn't figure out how to get them to land on both sides, just one or the other. since Scene Depth collision doesn't work with meshes I made an event drive system that kills the first particle on collision with world static and spits out an event that creates a new coin where it lands that doesn't move, but has a random mesh rotation on the Z axis, but if I try to make it land heads/tails it can end up 45 degrees and not perpendicular to the ground. What I want is a checkbox that "uses extremes only" for Y axis or for the X axis

#

is this possible? or is there another solution that exists?

#

I might just make them nonmesh particles with heads only just so I can use Scene Depth

#

I'd rather them bounce than have thickness and unique sides

obtuse seal
#

@winged nymph you could try faking it by having particles which pull from a spritesheet 🤔

#

At least, to enabled scene depth collision

winged nymph
#

but thats more draw calls then

#

it uses one material and texture atm

#

well

#

hmm

#

I could make them gpu particles and just give some of them heads and some tails

#

you could only really tell what side you're looking at when they've landed

#

this is the texture I made so I guess I could do that

obtuse seal
#

I'd assume it's not something you would look at closely if you're using particle meshes so it might be easier to do something like that

winged nymph
#

ya thats a good idea

fossil swan
cold sorrel
#

Yeah no kidding

#

One of my first scripting excercises

fossil swan
#

you arent a vfx artist untill youve done a coin effect XD

winged nymph
#

nice @fossil swan I was looking at your fireworks kit on marketplace today, might get my company to buy it

fossil swan
#

I hope it's usefull for them 😃

celest jasper
#

so I found this super old electro impulse on my hdd, is it even worth it to put it in a portfolio? seems to simple, I'm not sure, hahlp!

#

would need to make a prop for it and make it cooler

#

hm... I think I'll throw it away

fossil swan
#

speed up and you got a good core for an explosion hehe

celest jasper
#

I think I loved that one, because it was made in a material, and I actually used BP timelines to change the different noise expansions

#

aw.... if Luos says it's a good core, I think it's worth to finish, thanks mate! actually needed that right now! < 3

fossil swan
celest jasper
#

holy smoke

#

330mb gifs

#

unzipped

#

wait, do they use refraction for the background distortion?

fossil swan
#

yea, a dithered refraction most of the time

celest jasper
#

Dithered, it's everywhere ^^

#

cheap af

fossil swan
#

I wonder how much it improves refraction, since dithered also comes at a slight cost.

#

I made a list of questions about the vfx paragon and that was one of the first. once list is complete i'll probabl nudge mr Elek & co

#

food now.

celest jasper
#

reading your twitter

#

there is actually some questions I have

#

and that was the first post I read 😅

#

holy smoke, so many responses from epic

sullen forge
#

@fossil swan the dither is so the effects can have actual lighting and shadow

#

its not needed if you use forward render

#

as forward render can use full light pass even on translucent

#

tho that light pass is expensive as fuck

lusty saddle
#

I'm not sure where to put this... I use this
SceneTextureLookup(UV, 14, false);
in a material custom node, but it appear to scale weirdly if a resize down the game window

#

does anyone had this bug before ?

analog onyx
#

SceneTextureLookup expects scene texture UVs, and those might not match viewport UVs.

lusty saddle
#

I use the "ScreenPosition/Viewport UV" as input :/

analog onyx
#

One of these material expressions allows you to choose which UVs it outputs in the settings. Use scene texture UVs.

lusty saddle
#

I can't find that node... Do you know how it's called ?

outer fulcrum
#

hello, I am looking for a way to control the thickness of the lines when using a Wired material.

#

any tips or suggestions on how to better approach it? The current wired material is very subttle.

lusty saddle
#

Does someone know where I can find material node code in the engine source code ?

analog onyx
#

@lusty saddle Material expression is called Field of view. Alternatively you can Call GetDefaultSceneTextureUV to get proper UVs in custom node. Source code for for material node can be traced down to HLSLmaterialTranslator.h

fossil swan
#

@sullen forge its still a translucent material, and you wouldnt want refraction to cast shadows so I dont think the dither is being used for actual lighting and shadow.

harsh peak
#

hello hello newb here.

#

question, is there a way to distort the uvs of a subuv node when using it in a mesh particle?

#

same coordinate sys disturbing the uvs with a normal map looks oj on texture sample but not on texturesubiv

📎 unknown.png
surreal bay
#

it is supposed to be a mesh oultine post-process material

#

But I am getting this

#

the yellow flying cube is the post-process effect, not outlining the black cube at all 😄

#

I've straight copied that setup, as you can see

#

the only difference I can notice is the ScreenPosition node, which has 2 output pin

#

and is different from the node in the tutorial

#

and if I try to connect that custom node directly to the emissive, I get this error

celest birch
#

You on 4.19?

surreal bay
#

[SM5] /Engine/Generated/Material.ush(1413,12-83): error X3004: undeclared identifier 'GetScreenSpaceData'

#

@celest birch yes

celest birch
#

They changed the way you need to get UVs for SceneTextures

#

So instead of plugging in ScreenPosition into your Custom

surreal bay
#

I never studied HLSL yet, can you tell me how to get it? ^_^

celest birch
#

Try adding this into the custom node at the top:

float2 ScreenPosition = GetDefaultSceneTextureUV(Parameters, 14);
#

You might have to change that 14 to the index of the CustomStencil buffer

#

I don't know the index off the top of my head but if you create a SceneTexture and literally count how far down it is in the list minus 1, you'll get the index

surreal bay
#

I'll try, let's see 🤗

celest birch
#

Edited the code to use your variable name

surreal bay
#

the Custom node HLSL tiny window is hard to work with, there is a way to get a better editing window? :S

celest birch
#

You can copy and paste into your own text editor and then repaste back into Custom node after changes

#

But just copy paste for now

surreal bay
#

so given this as a starting point

# 
float offset_h = SceneTexelSize.r * Thickness;
float offset_v = SceneTexelSize.g * Thickness;
 float2 ScreenPosition = GetDefaultSceneTextureUV(Parameters, 14);

float TL = GetScreenSpaceData(ScreenPosition + float2(-offset_h, -offset_v), false).GBuffer.CustomStencil.r;
float TM = GetScreenSpaceData(ScreenPosition + float2(0, -offset_v), false).GBuffer.CustomStencil.r;
float TR = GetScreenSpaceData(ScreenPosition + float2(offset_h, -offset_v), false).GBuffer.CustomStencil.r;
 
float ML = GetScreenSpaceData(ScreenPosition + float2(-offset_h, 0), false).GBuffer.CustomStencil.r;
float MR = GetScreenSpaceData(ScreenPosition + float2(offset_h, 0), false).GBuffer.CustomStencil.r;
 
float BL = GetScreenSpaceData(ScreenPosition + float2(-offset_h, offset_v), false).GBuffer.CustomStencil.r;
float BM = GetScreenSpaceData(ScreenPosition + float2(0, offset_v), false).GBuffer.CustomStencil.r;
float BR = GetScreenSpaceData(ScreenPosition + float2(offset_h, offset_v), false).GBuffer.CustomStencil.r;
 
return max(TL, max(TM, max(TR, max(ML, max(MR, max(BL, max(BM, BR ) ) ) ) ) ) );
#

what I should replace with UV?

celest birch
#

Just add this at the top:

surreal bay
#
  • with ScreenPosition
celest birch
# 
float2 ScreenPosition = GetDefaultSceneTextureUV(Parameters, 14);
#

And remove the ScreenPosition input from your Custom node

surreal bay
#

even with that though, I still get [SM5] /Engine/Generated/Material.ush(1414,12-83): error X3004: undeclared identifier 'GetScreenSpaceData'

#

I remove that as well?

celest birch
#

No

#

The tutorial should be using SceneTextureLookup

#

Gimme a moment, I'll edit the code for you

surreal bay
#

thanks 🙌

#

though I really need to learn this stuff, how do I get to become a wizard as well? 🤔

celest birch
# 
float offset_h = SceneTexelSize.r * Thickness;
float offset_v = SceneTexelSize.g * Thickness;
float2 ScreenPosition = GetDefaultSceneTextureUV(Parameters, 24);

float TL = SceneTextureLookup(ScreenPosition + float2(-offset_h, -offset_v), 24, 0).r;
float TM = SceneTextureLookup(ScreenPosition + float2(0, -offset_v), 24, 0).r;
float TR = SceneTextureLookup(ScreenPosition + float2(offset_h, -offset_v), 24, 0).r;
 
float ML = SceneTextureLookup(ScreenPosition + float2(-offset_h, 0), 24, 0).r;
float MR = SceneTextureLookup(ScreenPosition + float2(offset_h, 0), 24, 0).r;
 
float BL = SceneTextureLookup(ScreenPosition + float2(-offset_h, offset_v), 24, 0).r;
float BM = SceneTextureLookup(ScreenPosition + float2(0, offset_v), 24, 0).r;
float BR = SceneTextureLookup(ScreenPosition + float2(offset_h, offset_v), 24, 0).r;
 
return max(TL, max(TM, max(TR, max(ML, max(MR, max(BL, max(BM, BR ) ) ) ) ) ) );
surreal bay
#

I feel bad to be using a piece of code that I totally fail to understand why it works x_x

celest birch
#

Just try messing around with things and eventually you'll learn

surreal bay
#

the message changed to this [SM5] /Engine/Generated/Material.ush(1414,12-83): error X3004: undeclared identifier 'SceneTextureLookup'

celest birch
#

Oh right, create a new input on your custom node

#

And connect a SceneTexture node to it and set the texture to anything besides SceneColor

#

Input name doesn't matter but I usually just name it SceneTexture

surreal bay
#

ok so I have this

#

looks right?