[4.7] Material Billboard mouse events not working

Development Asset Creation
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1

In a blueprint, I have a static mesh component and a Material Billboard component.
At a certain distance, the static mesh is hidden, and a screen space material billboard replaces it.

I need to interact with the screen space billboard with the mouse, but the mouse events do not fire.

This is how the billboard is configured:

29662-bbsettings.png

The cursor events for the billboard never trigger, while the static mesh events do trigger:

29663-bbresults.png

2

Hi Grogger,

Mouse events do not interact with billboards because they do not have any sort of collision or clickable surface. This is intended functionality. One way around this would be to use a Box component around the billboard that acts as this ‘collision’.

Another way could be to use a 3D Widget in it’s place.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/UMG/HowTo/Create3DWidgets/index.html

I’m not sure of the reason you are hiding the static mesh and using the billboard but if it’s about distance, then LOD’s could also be an option.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/Types/StaticMeshes/LOD/index.html

Cheers,

TJ

3

Hi TJ, thanks for taking the time.

I am using Material Billboards for the Screen Space Scaling functionality. For our purposes, the actors must be interactable at very large distances, so it is replaced with a mock billboard that scales with the screen size.

I think the 3D Widget sounds most appropriate for this, so long as it supports screen space. I will look into this option.

Thanks again :slight_smile: