make character semi transparent

I want to make it so that when a player uses lets say a stealth skill their player mesh becomes semi transparent. What is a general direction to look into for doing this?

Check oot Instanced Materials | Unreal Engine Documentation , make a parameter in the material, then use set parameter in blueprint

I’m having trouble getting to the materials when it’s a skeletal mesh, and then to where I can get to the parameters for those materials.

I am wondering how to make a transparent Character, without making the eyes and teeth show through the body and just have the background show through. Wouldn’t want to see teeth through the lips, or eyes, even though the lids are closed (or eye spheres from the back of the head)

Anyone know how to do this?

Here is how I did it for my game. I relied on a tutorial by Tom Looman. It lacks a bit more detail than what I would have liked but I figured it out eventually, in part thanks to this post. However, unlike that post, I did not want the fresnel effect as it is too cartoony for my game.

So here is how it goes:

1. Setup your character blueprint with two copies of the same mesh

The parent mesh will use the material that we will make next. The child mesh can have any material you like as it will not be drawn. Don’t make any other changes to the parent mesh. For the child mesh, untick “render in main pass” and tick “render customdepth”. This will make the child mesh go into the custom depth buffer which pretty much will just show its outline. For more information on why this is needed, just check the tutorials above,

2. Setup your translucent material.

Copy over everything in that image and make sure to set the lighting mode to Screen Space Ref and Surface ForwardShading so that your mesh is lit.

Mess with the values for the transparency and depth bias as needed.

Don’t forget to apply this material to the parent mesh in your character blueprint.

3. Check out the result in your editor window