I want to add a map menu to my game, although I want it to be 3D.
I already have my models and a pause menu to start from but I’m not sure how to swap from the pause menu to the map menu and display the model.
Attached are a picture of my pause menu and an early version of the model I want to use.
It can be just an actor (aPawn maybe) you show / hide. You can create a big box and place the meshes inside, add its own nice light and interactions. Place it under the world, where no one can go. When you want to show the map, posses that pawn. Leaving map means possessing your regular pawn.
Admittedly, there must be dozens of ways to handle it.
- streaming level
- render target capture (avoid if you want to interact with the map, gets tricky); but this is the way if you want to show a 3d object in a widget → see below
You say 3D, but you’re showing widgets that are not 3D at all. We may need more details regarding how it’s supposed to work.
My plan is to have an interactive map with the same utility as any other open world game. The camera will be placed above the mesh and can be moved by the player to navigate it. There is no exact purpose to the map being 3D other than to look cool.
You’re showing a widget. Are you going to display this 3d map in a widget?
That is the goal, not sure how to do it or if it’s even possible
Quite doable but somewhat involved.
What I mentioned above would work. Look into how render targets work. Once you know what they do, you can display a 3d object in a widget. The next step would be adding markers to the map - this can be done by translating 3d coordinates into widget geometry.
Break it into smaller pieces and work on that.
- start by enclosing your 3d map as previously mentioned
- capture it with a scene capture component
- get that into the render target
- get that into the material
- show that material in a widget
- optionally, add controls so you can pan the map around (by either moving the render target or the map itself, or even both)
- only then start working on the coordinates - consider representing map markers with widgets as projecting camera frustums is tricky. Much easier to translate coords.
Sounds like a busy day!
Thank you. Do you know where I can learn about render targets? Mainly finding tutorials and vague documentation.