How could I make my character get visually hurt in real-time

Development Rendering
1

Hi. I am wondering if it is possible in UE4 to make a layered material that overlays wounds in realtime gameplay, driven by a damage variable. How could such a thing be done ?

2

The easiest way would be a second ‘wounded’ texture, then lerp between that and the original with a scalar value.

In game, you can change that scalar value with these blueprint nodes:

CreateDyanamicMaterialInstance -> SetScalarMaterialValue

3

Well there was this guy working on recreating the dynamic damage/dismemberment system from L4D2.
That might get you where you want. WIP - Dynamic Left 4 Dead 2-Style Wounds/Dismemberment - Community Content, Tools and Tutorials - Unreal Engine Forums