I’m wondering if there is any way to have a light that only renders for a specific camera?
I’m trying to make a night vision screen using a scene capture, and I figured the easiest way would be to have a light only it can see to mimic the IR light from real night vision. But if that’s not possible, I’m not sure how else to go about it.
Hi spaid -
You may want to work with a post process that takes your existing and I assume night time illumination and simply increases it and adds the green or IR based tint.
Take a look at the documentation on the Post Process, here.
Thank You
Eric Ketchum
Hi Eric,
I’m able to approximate a pretty good night vision effect with the post process settings on the screen capture, but the exposure settings don’t seem to have any effect.
Hi spaid -
How are you using your night vision effect? Does the player see both the enhanced version and the un-enhanced version at the same time?
Eric Ketchum
Hi Eric, Sorry I wasn’t more clear initially. Yes, they both need to be on the screen at the same time.
Here’s a picture of my current test setup.
Hi Spaid -
I think I found you a solution that will work and keep the cost down. In the material that you are using to connect the Render Texture to your Phone element (HUD?), multiply the Render Texture by a constant (I did 25 in my test case which might be too extreme for what you are looking for). If you want to make the contrast a little more stark before you multiple that the texture and raise it to a power of a constant (high value, more contrast; lower value, less contrast) then take those results and use it as the base in your multiply node.
Though more costly you could also try setting the Global Illumination >> Indirect Lighting Intensity settings in your Screen Capture 2D Actor up to above 1.0. Global Illumination is way down at the bottom of the Capture Actor’s details panel just below Layers and above LOD and you will have to roll it out to see options.
Hope this works for you, I would love to see the final results -
Eric Ketchum
Hi Eric,
Using your first solution, along with bumping up the target gamma on the texture render target, I was able to get a decent solution for low light situations.
(The area is not quite as dark in-game as it looks in the image)
Obviously it still doesn’t work when there is no light at all, but I can probably work around that for now.
Thanks for your help.
Eric, I’m looking at your example here, and I was trying to apply a post processing material to mesh, but using the Render Target texture as the source to the Emissive Color, the material doesn’t render and is just the default gray checkered texture. My set up just has a SceneCaptureComponent2D with a target texture set to my RenderTarget texture, and then I created a material from my texture. The materical is changed from Surface to Post Process. So what is different than yours?
Actually if you don’t mind spaid, what settings did you use? Because I’m certainly not getting similar results.
Hi Gibdion, I’m not using a post process material, just a surface one.
You change it to Unlit? How do you get it so bright? Is there some lighting in the level? How much if so and what type?
Default lit, but I used the emissive channel to make it show up.
Also I adjusted the target gamma on the texture render target to 2.9, playing with that a bit can help. It still doesn’t work if there’s no lighting in the scene though.
Thanks a bunch. I was trying to use it as an Unlit texture, since that seemed to mimic Eric’s image (Unlit only works with Emissive Color) Speaking of lighting, how much lighting has to be in a scene? Because in my case, I do want it as dark as possible.
I know this is an old post and its already resolved, but I have to ask how you get the Screen Capture Material on the phone. It the phone a HUD or did you apply the material to a phone mesh?
Scene* sorry about that
It looks like he created a mesh in something, and applied a material to a surface of that mesh.
I knew that, I just wanted to double check he didn’t just make it a HUD element. What I really want to know is how he applied the Scene Capture 2D material to the mesh and have the Scene Capture camera follow the pawn so the phone screen updates dynamically. I’ve been trying to do that, but I cant seem to get it to work. I should probably post this in a new thread shouldn’t I
Hey Gibdion -
I was not using a post process effect here either just a manipulation of the render target texture by increasing/decreasing contrast and increasing brightness. You can play around with both ideas by adding a post process material to your scene capture 2D actor and then take the results and increase contrast and brightness after the capture has occured.
Hope that helps you out.
Eric Ketchum
You could just attach the scenecapture camera to my player character. I expanded my character in Blueprints and added the capture component and placed it as a child of the main camera so it follows the main camera movement
