How Do I Show Hidden Objects on Scene Capture 2D?

Hello!

I am trying to make a system where the player uses a video camera item to find things that cannot normally be seen, exactly like the looking for ghost orbs in the game Phasmophobia. I have made a working camera item that uses a Scene Capture 2D component, but I don’t know how to make an object only visible in the scene capture. It seems like it’s possible to hide items, or to only render certain things, but I can’t find anything that solves my problem exactly. Also, this is going to be a multiplayer game, so I need to make sure it works for several people at the same time. Does anyone have any advice? I would be very grateful for any suggestions!

Thank you!

One thing I would try would be to render the objects with a material that does alpha testing, and use a material parameter to control the alpha output by the object. Set it to zero normally, and set it to 1 when you render to the scene capture component. I don’t know if there are enough callbacks in the default engine to do this in blueprint, though.

You can hide the actors → capture the scene → unhide the actors.


1 Like

Thank you! This works like a charm!

1 Like

Thank you for the reply! What do you mean about having enough callbacks in the default engine. I’m still new to Unreal and game engines.

I’m talking about how to make this an “automatic” feature – adding a property to objects or materials that tell the engine to automatically do the right thing. You probably need C++ for that.

If you do it manually (similar to how @midgunner66 suggests) you won’t need that, so if that style of solution works, use that!