Bring back the lens flare editor

[Hevedy]

@SE_JonF

Would love this feature. The current marketplace offerings aren’t bad in certain uses, but there are a few bugs when it comes to moving actors.

Marketplace ones I tested are total broken. This can’t be done at all without edit the core sources.

@Chosker

interesting. I wasn’t aware of the marketplace ones (there’s apparently 3 of them) but from what I see in the videos and/or the user comments they seem limited (don’t offer flare “ghosts”, over-reliance on UE4’s stock image-based lens-flares, occlusion issues and/or lag issues)

my implementation (shown in the gif above) includes:

• flares at the source
• flare “ghosts” (the ones that go the opposite way) with customizable dispersion factor
• use any texture
• rotate and scale the flares arbitrarily
• handles occlusion (with a hard pop)
• fades at the edges of the screen (customizable)
• fades by distance (customizable)
• doesn’t lag 1 frame behind because it’s all done in the vertex shader
• can be moved around with no issues

all of that works already.
on top of that there’s other things [COLOR=#252C2F][SIZE=13px]I could add:[/SIZE][/COLOR]

• scaling of flare “ghosts” depending on screen position (bigger toward the screen edges, smaller at the center) (customizable)
• scale the size by distance (customizable)
• option to rotate the “ghosts” based on their orientation
• option to customize the horizontal and vertical influence on flare “ghosts” (i.e. to achieve horizontal-only ghosts)
• smooth fading from occlusion (might get expensive though)

any other ideas?

The occlusion on lens flares needs soft culling outside of the screen non when reach middle, and soft oclusion back objects, plus be over transparents and and selectable static size or dynamic size for distance. The super far away lights could be even done with single planes looking at camera and no effects but the others with hard effect need that features