Hi,
I would appreciate some tips towards creating a functioning MFD, like this:
I will need to be able to show text at different locations. I also need to draw some lines, curves, and small 2d icons.
Any suggestions on how to go about doing this the best?
I looked a bit at UMG 3d widgets, and SceneCapture2d but am a bit confused.
In an ideal world, my final display will be a little curved, and shiny (a glass CRT), so rendering to a texture seems very attractive. It’d be great to have everything fully lit and shadowed, with the above also serving as an emissive texture. I don’t think UMG can be used like this…
for the straight (and anti-aliased) lines you could override widget’s OnPaint
for circles, same as above but you need to write your circle math and connect points with lines
for curves - depends on how good/bad your trig math is
A quick mock-up:
See if you can create a normal widget first, turning it 3d should be rather straightforward.
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Some thoughts on other bells & whistles:
you could model the MFD in a 3d program, make it curved and sexy with buttons sticking out
make a material and apply it to the widget
look into RetainerWidget - this will allow you to apply post process
for tracking moving coordinates/objects on the display - you could use additional widgets and shift them about in the canvas or use UV coordinates to display them via the material
for the functional buttons you can use transparent buttons with text (as seen below)
the whole thing will most likely end up being moderately complicated and you might need to take advantage of the combination of the elements I mentioned above
The possibilities are there, you’d need to experiment with the method that suits you the best.
