Emit light inward from object?

Development Rendering
1

I am looking to create a material that will emit light on anything that enters the object. This object need to be transparent.

What is the best way to approach this?

2

there’s probably 101 ways to solve the problem, but here’s an idea that jumps at me:

  • create a material parameter collection (this way you can affect all materials on all objects, makes things easier)
  • drive a parameter (i.e. vector representing the location of the “object that causes other to glow when within proximity”)
  • the idea is that your magical object will control a material parameter collection, when this parameter updates (i.e. tells all other object materials that they have entered the “void”), these individual materials will do something that you want; i.e. glow, turn red, or whatever you want

setting up material parameter collections and driving them inside materials is much easier than it sounds; do a quick search in the UE4 documentation, there’s some examples that demo the feature pretty well

3

Thanks, Jak.

Can you elaborate or point me in the right direction for the “vector representing the location”?