How to add an outer glow effect to UMG visuals

[Adca_Dev]

Hey everyone
I’ve been trying to figure out how to add an outer glow effect to UMG Visuals/Texts but have a hard time finding any answers for it. I’m trying to create this blueish glow:

I’ve been playing around a bit with outlines and shadow but its far from ideal.

Would anyone know to create such a glow?

[irajsb]

Assign a UMG material to Outlines(its going to be hard making this work btw.) make it fade out at a certain point (like a box mask with screen aligned uv s and full X size and a low Y size that matches text size) .increase and decrease fade using a time node plugged into sine for more cool looking glow.For images i think you must add glow before importing to UE .

[Adca_Dev]

Thank you! Added outline material that fades from center to top and bottom Y values. It’s not perfect but it gets a far better result then anything ive found so far.

[JDARRAS]

HI @Adca_Dev
Can you show me your material ?
Did you find a better way to achieve this ?
Thnaks
JD

[XxNotAGamerxX]

@irajsb @Adca_Dev
Can someone please post a picture of the code/settings? I dont know what “Assign a UMG material to Outlines” means. Ty

[XxNotAGamerxX]

I searched more because @GroundZero17 is also looking for answers.

First some old info:

@NickDarnell

Currently all 3d widgets are composited onto an offscreen render target. So they’re resolved without any of the engines standard post processing, hence no glow. In the future we’re interested in supporting both, but for now, you will probably want to make sure the UI material is unlit, and you’ll need to get the glow by baking it into a texture you swap with the images you’re using on the widget.

Im not sure what this means/how to setup:

@NickDarnell

You could achieve the same thing with a text component and a single quad with a material on it that has the energy bar and does all the masking and glowing. Would be much cheaper to render, and you’ll get all the post processing effects you want. Downside though from having it in the world is you’ll get all the motion blur, post processing as well.

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Here he says why the color hax wont work on UMG (where you boost the Vibrance = tell the engine to make extra light above 1 = glow, when used in normal Mats).

@NickDarnell

Yeah, though I don’t think the slate material allow for over saturated colors right now.

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1. Someone might have found an answer. Can someone show setup pictures if it works?

@Arkideit

Alrigdy!

1. Find In Engine Content\EngineMaterials\Widget3DPassThrough.mat
2. Copy to project folder
3. Enter to material and add multiply and Constraint (emission power) to emission branch.
4. Voala! you have widget material with glowing effect.
   extra!
   If you are using texture and want add glow color to texture use widget blueprint texture settings.

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Also for context/comparison, this tutorial maker shows how we WISH the make Materials glow (Emission boost), but says he doesnt know how to do it for UMG Mats:

Unreal Glowing UI elements - UE4 Tutorials #165

• (And if anyone wants the Not-real-glow method (no real Emission/Vibrance boost), then he shows how to fake UMG glow:)
  https://youtu.be/-JborZ7YY9o?t=419