Light Shaft Occlusion with hidden source mesh ... possible?

Development Rendering
1

I’m trying to create a visual effect which I think could be achieved using an animated mesh in front of a directional light source with the Light Shaft Occlusion and Light Shaft Bloom enabled.
My plan is to use a blueprint to keep the light source direction vector always pointing towards the camera and position a mesh between it and the camera to generate the light shafts pointing toward the camera.
I would then animate the mesh which would create the light shaft pattern I’m after.

The catch is… I don’t want the mesh to be visible.

If I check ‘Actor Hidden In Game’ under the meshes Rendering tab it does hide it but no longer generates the light shaft/bloom effect.

Does anyone know if this is possible or can think of a workaround in code / blueprinting ?

Thanks

2

Light shafts are a post process effect, so it can only happen for things that are rendered.

3

OK that’s good to know.
Thanks

4

With custom depth and post process material it should be doable. There is article how to make light shafts as post process.
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch13.html

5

Thanks Kalle_H
Yeah I clocked that link yesterday after learning it was post process (I was surprised at that) and doing a quick search.
I’ve managed to create a post effect in OpenFrameworks with GLSL shaders to re-create this (following the GPU Gems paper) and plan to convert it to a Post Process Material once I’ve fully got my head round what I need out of it (using OF as a quick sketchpad really)
I’ll post up the results and blueprint network here once I’m done so others can re-use if they wish.