Creating a simple force-field material

Development Rendering
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1

Hello,

I am trying to achieve a simple material that glows around all edges and areas in collision with the object, as I am making a pulse effect when an object explodes. I am thinking that I can use a simple sphere that will grow and fade out. I can manage the grow and fade out part, but the material is what I need help with. It should look somewhat like this:

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In addition to this, how can I apply some form of distortion to this effect around its edges? Can it work somehow with the material e.g. refraction?

Thanks in advance :smiley:

2

I’m still unsure what to do :stuck_out_tongue: I managed to use fresnel to get the glow around the edges, but I can’t get the glow effect around things that collide with the edge of the sphere. I also can’t get distortion to work properly. You know how to achieve this effect?

3

umm… are you still waiting for reply or figured it out? i tried this and i am able to make whatever you made( the glow around and transparency in between, the refraction [sort of], and the glow around edges but glow around edges is either not visible or very non blurry) so i was wondering if you have been able to make it yet?

4

so far i am getting poor results

ignore the top half-cut weird image and to get mesh glow in collision , be sure to enable edit>project settings>rendering>generate mesh distance field ,and restart editor:

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5

is it necessary for it to glow on collision? there are many more effects like panning with normal and Fresnel with material blends to make nice force field like things.
i am sure the effect you are trying to reach is possible , i have seen somewhere while roaming around forums that it’s been done with ue4 before , but it’s just out of my skill.

6

Thank you so much for this advice, it helped me with the distortion effects which I found very attractive, however, the glow effect doesn’t quite seem like what I’m looking for. Using fresnel, I managed a glow around the edges of the sphere, but not on the areas where it overlaps another object. I used the fresnel to apply to glow effect, opacity and base color, but only thing left would be the effect of the glow appearing around overlapping edges.

7

check out the distance to nearest

8

try a depthfade node, inverse it (oneminus) and combine it with the fresnelstuff singh showed you :slight_smile:

9

Thanks! This works great! I used the depthfade node, aplied a oneminus to it, then added it with my fresnel glow, then finally clamped it to 0, 1.

10

Yes that’s exactly what I needed! Thanks! However I have discovered that it appears to be quite a performance intensive feature. I must find another way to do this.