Help with creep material, utilizing render target.

Development Rendering
1

Hello fellow unreal engieers!. Im a bit over my head and would appreciate some help…

Im trying to do a zerg like creep material. When an object move upon the ground, the ground will be affected and mask to a different material. Also slowly lerp back to the orignial material when the creep objects is no longer nearby.

What I currently have is a material that use scene capture that draws additive on a render target where the objects move. I have few problems that im having a hard time solving.

The first, and biggest problem is that I dont know how to lerp back to the original material on the places when the creep object is no longer nearby. If anyone could help me with this I would be very grateful!

Some minor problems that are not as big but would still appreciate the help. My render target texture is now black and white, and the edges are very hard. I would like more smooth edges, blurry. Can’t find any good way to solve this either.

Thanks in advance & keep hammering!

2

I have not tried anything myself so far, but maybe Vertex Painting and a tessellation material might do the trick?

3

You could feed the creep position into a parameter from Blueprints, which is then used inside the ground material as a sphere mask. The sphere mask will naturally let you adjust the falloff, but you could use that mask in combination with other things to soften it more, have it based on normal details, break up the edges, etc.