Hi everyone,
I’m using HDRI Backdrop in Unreal to create a dome with stars. I’m using this HDRI sky texture, and I placed a directional light in the scene to act as a moon. The issue is that the directional light is completely blocked by the dome, and I want it to be visible behind the stars.
So, the HDRI Backdrop is made of two parts, the geometry (the dome itself) and the skylight. I found the material responsible for the dome and wanted to adjust its opacity so that the light behind it could show through. Since I couldn’t change the opacity directly from the material instance, I opened the parent material called HDRI_Projection_Sky
Inside that material, I switched the blend mode to translucent, which gave me access to the opacity slot. that way, I managed to get the effect I wanted. Meaning the Moon is visible behidn the hdri sky texture.
But there is one problem. Since I edited the parent material, every HDRI dome across all my levels now has this translucent effect. I only want it to apply in this one specific level.
So instead of having to change that value manually every time in the parent, I reverted the blend mode in the parent back to opaque, and this time I added a parameter node. I created a value node, converted it to a parameter, and connected it to the opacity slot. Now I can control the opacity directly from the material instance, because the parameter shows up as a slider. So, I can tweak it per scene without touching the parent each time.
Just wanted to know , is this the right way to handle it, or is there a better methodology for this kind of stuff?