So,
I´m still struggling to recreate a blend function from DCC, where I use the distance to another object as a blend mask between two materials.
“DistanceToNearestSurface” seemed to do the trick, but I quickly noticed that its very inaccurate: Meshes smaller than 100cm create blocky masks and further away than a certain distance they stop working alltogether.
Since I can´t just rescale all my assets, I´ve been stuck forever now, trying to find a way to increase the accuracy for the global distance fields, which the function is based on, or how to alternatively use mesh distance fields instead of global distance fields.
That would be the ideal outcome, because then I could tweak the resolution on a per mesh basis as needed, instead of overall increasing resolution.
I also wouldn´t mind just using it as a cvar as needed, we ONLY do cinematics, so game performance is of little concern to us (unless it makes editor too laggy to work in).
I´ve also looked into other methods, like projecting a spherical mask in object space or something, anything that allows me to create a blurry, spherical mask that do NOT rely on proper UVs.
All the stuff like “radial mask” require UVs and they do not work across seams with normal UVs.
I couldn´t really make the projection stuff work, maybe there also is an option to use that with the “spherical mask node” and I´m just to stupid to figure out how to then be able to pick not only position but also projection axis (x/y/z) for the function to work in a material instance…
But there are definitely usecases where using something like “distanceToNearestSurface” would be better or even necessary.
There is also the issue of then having to disable “affect distance field lighting” on ALL meshes EXCEPT the trigger mesh, which I haven´t found a workaround for yet and which can become quite cumbersome to set up with complex scenes.
Any hints are appreciated!