How to apply various material effects to an actor without dying trying it?

Development Asset Creation FX
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1

I have some effects made with materials. Especially the masked ones I like a lot.

These are an example.

But I have a problem that I don’t know how to solve.

The way I’m doing it is necessary to modify the original material.

I think this is impractical when I want to apply several effects on the same actor.

For example, if I want to apply three different effects on an actor. The actor’s original material will become an indecipherable plate of spaghetti.

Sin título
Sin título849×455 5.56 KB

Another drawback is when I want an effect to apply to all the actors in the scene.

actors

So, what to do? Change the materials of all of them one by one?
So I think this option is not practical either.

I thought maybe i can have an Array of materials for one actor each for a different effect…

ArrayMaterials
ArrayMaterials947×263 24.3 KB

But this also represents a colossal job. If there are 200 actors and you must make 3 materials for each one, that’s 600 materials… So this option also seems to be inappropriate.

So what is the trick?
How to do this without drowning in a plate of spaghetti?

Thank you very much!!

2

Perhaps the Translucent Overlay Material that was introduced in 5.1 could solve this?

3

I’ll read it right now…
Thank you very much for your answer 3 DRaven.

Do you know if the invisible actors issue was resolved in 5.1?

I had to go back to version 5.0.3 because that problem wouldn’t let me work…

4

I haven’t tested out 5.1 in depth yet. So far I got a little discouraged with the unloaded actor problem. It for some reason deleted my blueprint after testing different fixes.
Once someone finds a fix I might give it a go.

5

Ok, thank you very much for your help 3d Raven. :sparkling_heart:

6

The new features of UE 5.1 are amazing.
I think “Translucent Overlay Material” could be the solution to my problem.
It’s a pity that UE 5.1 has such an annoying bug.
I’m looking forward to them fixing it to try it.
Meanwhile I’m using “layered materials”.
I think it’s a good tool to avoid spaghetting the code.

Thank you very much for your help 3DRaven!! :sparkling_heart: