Can you make a Plane FACE the camera via it's Material only?

[ryinmo]

Has anyone had success in making a plane always FACE the camera via it’s material?

There are a few proposed solutions online and a Sprite node that are very useful, but do NOT do what I want.

The Sprite node (any many solutions online that I tried) ORIENTATE the rotation of the object to match the camera, making it “parallel” to the camera at all times:

That’s NOT, what I want.

I want to rotate the object to actually FACE, the camera.

Image Reference:

Why am I trying to do this?

I am trying to place a card (Plane) in a scene that aways faces the camera.

Most code online (and the Sprite node) rotate the object to the “opposite facing” of the camera, making it parallel, which is not what I want to do. It causes this problem as the Plane gets towards the edge of the screen:

(It intersects with the sphere because it’s trying to remain parallel.)

To solve this, the plane needs to always be FACING the camera. Like this:

(I have only been succesful getting this to work on one axis, can’t figure out how to do both.)

I know this can be done in blueprints, but I’m trying to learn to do it in the material.

Is it possible?

Any help or links would be appreciated!

[3dRaven]

Face camera via Material (without Particle System)

[ryinmo]

Thanks for your response, I have seen this video.

The issue is, it only works on one axis.

If you move above the object, it will not face you.

I need it to work like this, but on both axis so it’s always facing the camera from every angle.

Has anyone done this before?

[3dRaven]

I was able to calculate the vertical rotation.

I tried combining them both but seeing as the world offset is based on vectors instead of quaternions I seem to be getting some flipping of the coordinates at times. Perhaps a more math savy person could help make it more stable.

High res

rotate-Cam

pure code
material.txt (162.6 KB)

I’m guessing the inconsistency may come from the input orientation. One probably needs the information fed from the previous transform.

[ryinmo]

Thanks, thats the exact same math nightmare I ran into when trying to solve this lol.

I did find a solution, it was “hidden” in the Content Examples project (of course ):

It’s deep within the Math_Hall level (3rd to last demo 2.20), name of the material is “M_Camera_Vector_to_Object”.

Here’s the material for it, hooks right up to WPO:

Note: I don’t know what the unconnected 1,1,0 vector multiplied by ThirdOrthogonal Vector3 does or where it goes, but I left it in for completeness.

Info:

• To see it update in editor, I had to change the Actor Position node to a Object Position node.
  

• Width and Height control the scale of the object that the material is applied to.

• To make it scale from the center, subtract 0.5 from TexCoord of Y axis.
  

• To control scale with Transform > Scale in the editor, multiply width by ObjectScale > X, multiply height by ObjectScale > Y (or Z).