I’m trying to recreate the portal effect from the ch2 end event so that I can use the effect in a future map I plan to make and i’ve found a way to do it with translucent and additive materials using custom stencil but that has some problems
Translucent: meshes made of multiple parts constantly fighting over each other and sorting isent always an option
additive: meshes never fully opaque and look ghostly depending on mesh
I would like to know if recreating the effect with masked materials is possible since masked materials cant use the scene texture node
Note: Portal effect must use a texture
The portal effect I made in uefn
Hello, I wasn’t familiar with the portal from the event, so I had to watch a video.
If the effect must use a texture - you can try this method to add depth. (This method would make the UFOs appear very ‘static’ though…)
I’m also imagining a big skydome mesh with a hole masked out of it.
The Motherships are 3d models and are using masked materials and a texture to act like its behind a portal
The Texture in question
Better view of the portal effect using free cam
Video
Thanks for the extra info + Image,
I’d try moving forward with a masked texture.
Imagine that, but in the middle of a massive skydome static mesh. So it’s like a giant half-bubble with a hole poked in it.
Be sure to either enable ‘Two Sided’ in your material or change the normals so that they face inwards.
This method will require some configuration of the UVs of the half-sphere. (Possible with the built in modeling tools)
Sadly that’s not gona work, i’ve already tried that a while ago
Is the ultimate goal to have things fly out of the portal? (If not, that could simplify things) Is it important that the portal opens up in the sky? (That would be an entirely different challenge of animating a material)
The video you posted is good, because it shows some tech art magic going on as the camera tries to approach the portal. (So whatever is going on in that material it’s probably taking the camera position into account)
while having things other than the player be able to pass thought he portal be a nice addition my ultimate goal is to just recreate the effect of the portal opening in a set position in the sky and having things behind the portal only render if its actually behind the portal
Sketch I made for reference
Everything behind the portal uses a masked material and the texture I posted earlier and masked materials cant used custom stencils like my first post portal image does (at least as far as I know)
The portal has some MPC settings
I believe the portal is a 2d texture placed in 3d space that masks everything that’s not directly behind it based on the players view angle like the sketch I made
Or it can be a plane with a masked texture idk how epic did it.
However they did it, it’s beyond the limit of my immediate knowledge. 
An observation: There are “WPO” scalars inside of that material. It looks like they animated the ships using “World Position Offsets” (Basically changing vertices location inside of material without any external animation/keyframes)
As a path forward, I would watch many different “How to make a portal” videos for UE4/5, and then try to migrate those methods into UEFN. Also, there are several portal examples on Fab that could be dissected.
The UFOs materials have been disected already thanks to epic re-adding the Invasion season files for it and they use the rotate about axis node to spin
Also looking at the event mats more they seems to use screen aligned uvs
Sadly i doubt this helps since we still dont know how epic did the portal position and stuff
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If only an epic dev that worked on the Ch2 end event would grace us with the knowledge on how they did it.
And maybe a tutorial.
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Well if i dont get any help i can just use the method i found. I’ll just have to do some tricks to make it look right. I just wish we can use scene textures on masked materials because translucency sort fighting will bother me.
well good news after a while i found the exact method epic used altho I have to manualy port a material function not included into uefn to it.
Nice. I’m curious to hear/see more. What’s the material function called?
my apologies I Left the forums for a while. The node that works is called “ObjectAlignedVirtualPlaneCoordinates” its not in uefn so you would have to remake it but with ue5 letting you edit any material function you can easily remake it
found out that theres a node called VirtualPlaneCoordinates that does the job better and its built into uefn
