I recently found you can play a video with alpha inside UE, amazingly useful for VFX. I was puzzled because I was on the impresion this was not possible. I found you can have a media texture with alpha in a material on UE 4.27 and UE 5.1… but now, with UE 5.2 I’m back at the point in the past when the alpha channel is ignored, and it becomes black.
Hey there @Award55555! Seems like a possible bug! Is this the migrated project or a fresh one? What’s the file format (and compression settings) of the file used? Does this apply to other media textures as well?
Hi and Thanks! I’ve found that image sequences work fine. The issue comes with MOV files. This was a migrated project so I have tried in a fresh one and same issue happens. Not a big deal now that I can use image sequences, though been able to use alpha movs was also convenient.
Interesting! I’m going to put together a MOV file with transparency to test it on my side and verify a couple of things and we can put together a bug report. On an unrelated note, as a sigil connoisseur, I love your sigils! Excited to see more!
I’m afraid I can’t take credit for these wonderful sigils, they are from production crate. A great source for VFXs. You can download and use those for free with a basic account:
You access many mov files with alpha here.
Oh fantastic resource thanks! I’ll report back once I’ve replicated (or failed to replicate) the issue!
I wish you could take a look at this question I post here: Cinematic Translucency and Depth Of Field strange behaviour
It’s not the same but it’s well conected.
No worries! I did actually verify that multiple filetypes are unable to display their alpha correctly for reference and am putting together the report as it does seem like a regression.
As for the other thread, I’ll have to do some research into the DOF issue a bit more as when it comes to the depth buffer I don’t work with it all too often. Translucency is always weird with it, and sometimes custom depth is needed.
For what it’s worth, the Bink video format (which comes with Unreal), works well with alpha (I’ve just tested in 5.2).
The Bink encoding tool/player is to be found in \Engine\Binaries\ThirdParty\Bink in the Unreal installation folder. You need to import as its own MediaPlayer type and it has its own Media Texture format too. You need to enable the Bink plugin to access those.
I’m working with 5.3 and works fine (though I’m usually working with image sequences ), but thanks, I will take a look at Bink encoding, I didn’t know it.
