So I found out how to animate material parameters using Material Parameter Collection packs, however I have an issue with the workflow.
The MPC packs allow you to change material paramaters, yes, but the problem I have is that it changes all meshes that use that material all at once. I need to alter meshes individually.
See the screenshots below for my example. I am working on a piano animation and I want the keys to glow as they are pressed, but of course, only one at a time.
So, right now my only feasible option (that I can think of) is to create individual Materials and Material packs for each key, but that seems like a lot of unnecessary work and I’ll end up with well over 2-3 dozen materials/packs for all the keys (and other instruments) that I need animated, Is there a better way to do this?
In UDK, I could use the Material Instance actor to alter the materials based on the particular mesh it was attached to. The Material Instance actor in UE4 does not seem to do anything as far as I can tell. I recall reading somewhere that it was not implemented yet. Placing the MI actor in game, linking it to a mesh, then adding the MI actor to the editor, there are no options available to alter in the track list. Can anyone confirm this has not yet been implemented and/or I am just doing it wrong?