It would be nice to have some documentation on the GlowingQuad plugin, but it seems like there is very little.
I want to create a sphere with glowing lines across it along the normal planes.
According to the plugin’s showcase, it can be used for any convex planar shape.
So, I created three blueprint classes for the glow along each plane:
Next, I tried to create a Point class with a sphere and the three glows. I added the sphere to the viewport, but I am not seeing how to add the other items.
I think I am getting somewhere. I added the three directional glows to the sphere using Child Actors
Now, I can see the glow for the XY plane:
A few issues:
The other planes do not have a glow.
I can only see the glow looking up from below the object.
I set the color of the glow to blue, but it is still showing white. Here are the color settings:
The glow is rectangular. I want it to follow the shape of the sphere.
I finally got the Glow Showcase to stop locking up my editor, well at least most of the time.
Looking at the last item in the showcase - Vertex shader version, it says “any convex planar shape”.
I want to wrap the glow on a sphere. That is not a flat shape. So, will I need to create small flat segments to go around the circumference?
Also, looking at the blueprint for that showcase item, it uses a spline, but I don’t see where it defines the spline points. Anyone have some hints on this?
Try setting the glow material to 2-sided.
I did not see a setting for that, did I miss it?
If you look at the glow settings, there is a checkbox for show bottom which I checked.
Now, I see the glow from the top and bottom, but not when I look at the sphere directly. I think the glow is only on one of the faces of the cylinder. It seems to be applying the glow to a single plane, not the full 3D object. I think I may need to define the surfaces separately and apply the glow to each of them.
The leads me to the question I posted above:
Since the glow says it will do a planar shape, how do I wrap it around the curved sphere?
I think I may have to define a bunch of small rectangles and place them around the circumference of the sphere.
The cut off angle is probably responsible for the dynamic behavior in the doom glow settings
I modified the c++ to be able to access the procedural mesh component to copy it’s values for a static mesh in the constructor. You can see with the example scene in the main content folder how it can be setup
quad.zip (12.2 MB)
This is what my scene shows:
I want it to look more like this:
How do games like Beat Saber make such convincing glow on my headset?
The glows in the showcase seem like they would do what I want but I am having a hard time figuring out how they work.
When I go to the showcase and select the colored glow, it selects multiple items:
They all have the BP_DoomGlow blueprint. When I go to that blueprint, it does not have any components. Also the construction and event graphs are empty.
Is that because it is all done in C++?
They are grouped (see the green outline / corners of box)
Shift + G un-groups them
Thanks for that. I ungrouped them. Now, I can open the blueprint for BP_DoomGlow2 (which is the one for the colored glow) and I see this:
which is strange because the glow is blue, but the color selector has yellow selected.
And, the construction script and event graph are empty.
I am so confused by this right now, where do I start?
The color variables are probably set to instance editable. So that every actor of that type in the world can have its own color.
Then the internal color in the blueprint is just the default starting color.
I created a new blueprint class and set its parent to BP_DoomGlow. I then dragged that into my screen. This is a starting point:
I want to have a blue glow, so I tried setting the glow color and fill color to blue:
Now, the glow is translucent and less intense. It seems related to the fill color. The farther that is from the center of the color wheel, the more translucent the glow becomes:
Is there a way to fix that so the opacity does not change with the color?
I think I might have a solution. Its not as nice as the true bloom effect, but I think it will work.
I create a box with the base material I created.
Then, I put a white box at the mid-line which slightly protrudes outside of it.
Next, I put instances of BP_DoomGlow on the sides of the white box and made one tinted blue and the other tinted red.
Here is the result:
I am going to have to tweak it.
For the sphere, I am going to have to create a bunch of small flat panels all the way around the circumference since the glowing bit will actually be a flat surface.
Glow is usually a shader, easiest when lighting is not too complex (no light mixing, no environment lighting, no light volume). But that usually leaves you with a colored cylinder which might not “glow” enough. In post processing you can play with exposure and bloom values which can greatly assist, or boost a certain color range on the final image which in that example would be pure blue.
I have been told I can’t use post processing on a Quest 2 headset. That is why I have been trying to get the GlowingQuad to work.
I saw your message but I will answer it here. If that headset only supports Vulkan and Vulkan does not support certain shader options (you say post processing is not supported) then there’s nothing to do about that. I can’t tell why that headset would not support it, seems odd. Google shows some posts on a private group on Reddit which seems to confirm that it isn’t supported. Don’t have access to that group to read the entir eposts.
Well… You might get similar results if you create a cylinder mesh and fake the glow as a volume. there are plenty of ways to do it
Any idea on how to recreate dooms volumetric glow with vertex shader?
faking the lighting as a mesh would create a more cheap effect though, it won’t shine on the environment or do other complex things. It’s what you’d see on older games.
