Over the past few days I have been searching around trying to develop a way to recreate the effect of UTPortals from UDK/UE3 in Unreal Engine 4. SceneCapture cameras that move relative to the player combined with render targets can be used to create a crude version of the effect, but are laggy and far from an optimal solution. Unfortunately, it does not seem possible to recreate the effect in a convincing/practical way without delay or resolution issues.
These actors allowed for a 3d projection of a different area of a level to be displayed on a plane. Projectiles, players and other objects were teleported between the portal planes. UTPortals were an extremely interesting feature which provided a wide range of options for level designers and artists alike, including impossible geometry and non-euclidean level architecture. For me personally, they are essential to the concept behind one of my projects and I was hoping that an improved version would be included in UE4, but to no avail. I have even considered returning to UDK just so I can access this feature. I have seen several other individuals attempt to recreate UTPortals in blueprint, but the result fails to hold up to the original.
For these reasons, I ask Epic to consider re-implementing a UTPortal-type feature into UE4. I’m sure that with the power of UE4, the UTPortal actor could be vastly improved upon, and would be a well-received future (re)addition to the engine.
If a UT Portal type feature were added it would be useful in all sorts of amazing ways, the possibility’s of what you could do with a feature like this are endless.
Also requesting this. I’m aware of some workaround methods but the problem is these really don’t hold up well in third person. Making a proper Portal Actor would involve certain core changes to how traces and lerps functioned (otherwise things like walking through a portal with active camera lag would be ludicrous-looking) as well as how lighting is baked, which can’t be realistically achieved without the work of Epic themselves… but it would be ENORMOUSLY useful to me.
I feel like a lot of people nowadays see requests for this kind of functionality as a play at making Portal clones, but the advantages to level designers are pretty diverse; looping maps, ease of fitting interior spaces into exterior buildings, etc.
I guess it would help to make realistic mirrors for archvis. Also would love to see that feature inside UE4. Or any examples, that will show, how to make such effect, because it is impossible to make this with render targets, as they capture image from one point, but you need to project it on a plane.
I believe they used the stencil buffer in UDK to render (from a separate camera) to a part of the screen covered by a portal polygon, same technique that was used by Valve. UE4 uses a deferred renderer, whereas UDK used a forward renderer. I’m not sure how this complicates things, but that might be the reason why it was not included.
Be that as it may, I too would like to see this awesome feature in UE4, so here’s my vote
