I’ve been playing with this idea to use UE4’s reflection probe system for transparency. Essentially, you should be able to sample reflections via the camera’s direction, rather than the object’s normal, to see “straight trough it”. Obviously not good enough for a big glass pane, but it could be used for some cool Visual Effects, such as a “predator” like effect.
Here’s the proof of concept I put together in Unreal Tournament, by changing the player’s normal to be the camera vector. The results are promising!
@stororokw Your images don’t work, can you try uploading again?
The shading model does refract and reflect at the same time, and you blend between these. (in this case via Fresnel)
This screenshot demonstrates this.
The fact that the player does not refract in it is one of the biggest flaws. Perhaps this could be enhanced using a similar approach as capsule shadows.
The “thickness” thing I do not understand, what do you mean?
I still get the same result with ViewProperty (even that in the description says otherwise, dont know if Im doing something weong or its a bug), it doesnt seem to change in the shadow pass. The only way I can get something close is with the transform view, but that way I can only get the camera forward vector.
If anyone is still thinking about this 5 years later and with UE5\substrate already out, I managed to - back in ue4 - obtain a reflection vector that samples the cubemap to look like transparency with this method:
Obviously right now the reflection is just flat, but with some tweaking of the normal it should be possible to fake a credible refraction. Roughness can then be used just as you would for reflections. A clear coat material could be used to also have proper reflections on top of this, I guess.
