Transparent meshes between camera & character

19 APR 2017 NEWS:

I’m happy to announce that the project is officially out on the marketplace, follow this link: Fade Camera Occluders in Blueprints - UE Marketplace

Hello :smiley: .

I want to show you this simple system that I made in Blueprint, it is usefull to make transparent all type of meshes between the camera and your character, this effect can be seen in many games, from Dark Souls 2 to Uncharted 4.
I want to clarify that it is Material indipendent, this mean that you do not need to change, modify or do anything in your meshes or materials, everything is done in Blueprint, just “plug & play”.
It is possible to adjust some settings like: the radius to cover, things to ignore, ecc…

Please let me now what you think and feel free to ask/suggest me anything :slight_smile:

Update #1 [06 Feb 17]

  • Added transition effect, currently I’m working on a noise effect like MGS:TPP.
  • Added categories, you can list them all into a database and then apply them to your meshses.
  • Color Override, if you want a hard override that has priority over the other things, then you can do it.
  • Added Character transparency when too close to the camera (material indipendent).
  • After the transition the transparency fade away as the camera get closer to the mesh.

This looks really cool!

Thank you! :slight_smile:

this is awesome! is it possible to use it on meshes/actors/blueprints with multiple materials? from that video it is not immediately obvious.

Thanks and sure :slight_smile: This mesh and the basic skeletal mesh from the third person template has two+ materials.

so cool, ty for the answer! few more if you don’t mind:
does it work with dynamic material instance?
the transparent material is set globally or per object? not even sure if I would need to set it per object, but maybe per category? environment in transparent gray, enemies in transparent red so you can notice them sneaking behind you, and so on? just an idea.
another idea is to have something like ‘transition’ effect between transparent and normal state, something like this: Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem gameplay PC HD [1080p/60fps] - YouTube, again just an idea.

As I wrote in the description above the video, it is material indipendent, so a mesh can have all the type of materials that it wants, even with different parents :slight_smile:

That’s an awesome idea, currently is global, you can only choose two “styles”, one for the static meshes and one for the skeletal meshes; but I could implement this feature that let you decide a “category” that apply different styles.

The transition is a big problem, for the reason that (again :D) it is material indipendent, so that would be possible in two ways, the first is restrict the plugin to a single big parent material and with a bit of programming magic do a transition even with opaque materials; the second way is to do a transition “per category”, and I think is the best solution (for now).

Thanks for the ideas, I really appreciate it :slight_smile:

cool, ty!
last question i have is: ETA?

Well consider that the main code is “finished”, but I want to test it out a little more, and I want to find a way to make translucent occlusion
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with a good method, and implement your ideas (categories and transition) :slight_smile:

Awesome job! looking forward to it!

I wanted to inform you that I found a good way to make transitions :slight_smile:

Also I implemented the custom styles, now you can make categories and assign them to every mesh that you want, it is even possible to override specific mesh instances with a specific color without touching any material :slight_smile:
Soon I will update the original post with more informations, thanks again for the ideas :smiley:

Thank you :slight_smile:

This is getting cooler and cooler! very nice! ty for listening to our ideas.

Really nice implementation of the character also getting opacity if its too close to the camera. Awesome!

I finally implemented support onto movable meshes, and the transition with skeletal meshes, now I was wondering if is a better solution to hide completely the skeletal mesh after the transition instead of keeping it transparent, this because I can’t find a good solution to solve this problem that I mentioned a few days ago, the only real solution seems to be to spawn two additional skeletal meshses, one with the opacity effect, and one rendered into the customdepth pass to hide internal bones, but it’s a tricky method, and I don’t like it:

(or just use a very noisy effect to hide this “glitch”)

I think the player would like and “need” to see the character for localization. Well… Maybe 100% transparent but with an outline effect?

That’s another cool idea, well I think I am going to build a system where you can set up your effect and transition as you like, and maybe for a starting point I’ll make two o three effect with a really basic effects like those in the videos :slight_smile:

Any updates?

I have been very busy lately, I will try to finish it this weekend and then send it to Epic.

Hey man, this looks amazing! I stumbled about this just now, because i’m trying to make a top-down action rpg with a fixed camera (like Diablo, Path of Exile, Torchlight etc.) where objects becoming transparent if they block the camera is a key feature. Is there any way i could get my hands on this blueprint, or is it just for your own personal use?