Hi everyone, it is my first time posting here, but I’ve encountered an obstacle in my asset creation that I’m not sure how to pass. This might turn into quite a hefty long post.
I am working on a thesis on creating realistic jellyfish for games in Unreal Engine. My main task is to find an artist friendly workflow to creating convincing translucency and blurs for jellyfishes.
As a reference, here is an image of the effect I am trying to make:
My main problem where I have been stuck for a good while now is the blurring inside the jellyfish body. Things closest to the viewer/inside thinner areas are not blurred, the further they go into the distance the more blurred they get (the markings for example).
At first I thought, hey, this must be simple with SceneDepth and Spiral Blur! But the bad part is that using SceneDepth as a DistanceBlur mask still creates blur artifacts around the objects closest to camera (atleast according to my testing, guessed that it’s because the materials are surface based?), and worst of all, does not blur translucents at all and creates really bad artifacts with Two-Sided turned on. The reason I wanted it on is to show the dome shape overlap, and maybe somehow achieve the self-blurring that’s visible in the image.
Second approach was to try out Substrate, as it has the depth blur inbuilt into the translucent materials (?). But again, similar problems, as this does not blur translucents and also creates surface artifacts when it is Two-Sided.
Third attempt was back with Legacy materials and using the dome mesh as a stencil mask to create a post-process blur material. This probably was the best attempt as it blurs translucents. However, it does not work per-instance because of Scene Depth, it would look nice for a jellyfish in front of the camera but the effect would break if there were more jellyfish in different distances away from the camera, or you just simply move as a player/camera.
This is my visual collection of some-what sucessful attempts, I am still trying to get the perfect effect, but I am afraid it is not possible?
So I turn to you guys, maybe you’ve got some ideas on how to tackle this in Unreal? Maybe there is some kind of volumetric blur effect hidden in the engine that can take thickness/density into account, or there is a way to make sure Spiral Blur sample translucents along with Scene color? Perhaps there is a way to create a SceneDepth per object for the post-process? I’d really appreciate your help, this has been a headache for two weeks now hahah!
Excuse the crude meshes and screenshots, they are for experimentation purposes, please let me know if you need more input! Thanks in advance.