random flickering material (no sine!)

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
1

Hey all,

just watched this video.

So, I just have one question if I may. It shows the blueprint with a mesh, a light and the mat instance on it.

So the dynamic inst is set to wortk onbly with the mesh in the blueprint.

Here is my situation. i’ve got only static meshes for performance reasons (VR game). If I understand well UE4, when in a blueprint, meshes are not set to be static. I just want to put the instance on the meshes already in the scene. How can I get only the dynamic inst and not the whole mesh + light + inst system? just the same flickering effect (found some vids, but it’s a sine system so too linear… i want random flickering…)

Thanks in advance.

Pierre

2

Layer sine waves of different periods…

EDIT: I had some spare time, so I threw together a super simple example:
flickering.jpg

2 Likes
3

Thanks for the help. Just tried, and it’s almost that.

How can I avoid the material emissive to go down to zero? It jumps to 20 (thats the value max and the value I want, but I would like to go down to 3 or 4 at minimum, not zero. That’s why I thought about random floating in range. I have full control of the range for the emissive, but it works fine with this sine… (never say never! :slight_smile: )

Thanks a lot!

4

Use the output of the sine wave stuff, put that into the alpha of a lerp node. Set your min/max ranges on the lerp to your 3-4 min / 20 max values.

5

Will try it,

Thanks a lot.

6

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There is no way to recreate this.,. Maybe you could make a video showing how you made it? I am stuck on the VERY FIRST NODE (as there is no ‘NODE’ simply called time.

I wish people wold give actual examples, which would actually help,… not just pretty pictures, with no information about how to ‘get there from here’

thnks…

7

You right click and type “Time”…

9

Thanks so much, I just used this in my project and it looks so good! all I did was change the divide to 2 from 3 to have longer flickers and it was pefect

10

There is a time node you right-click and search for ‘time’. you are getting annoyed at someone who is just being kind and helping for not making a video?? A video would take loads of effort and you cant expect them to do that. It is not their duty to help you but they are, because they are nice.

11

Bumping old thread…

I have a series of torches in my scene all using this same material. Is it possible to offset the flicker based on the object’s position in the world or otherwise randomize the flickering per light? Currently the flicker looks great with this, but they all flicker in time so it throws it off.

12

Thanks IronicParadox I just used this in my project as well, I learned something today!

13

This is a great example HOWEVER be wary that it might look random but isn’t truly random.

The 3 sine waves used here for example (or any value you use for that matter) will create a repeating pattern at some point usually much quicker than later. I added your values to on this calculator ( Desmos | Graphing Calculator ) to look at the wave and it repeats. It still gets the job done for randomizing but in my case, the client would be looking at the effect for an extended period of time so repetition would be noticeable.

If anyone knows how to create a truly random no repeating wave, that would be much helpful!!!