This is a bit of a bump to a previous post of mine linked here. I’m attempting to recreate the level transition effect seen in the game Viewfinder. The effect can be seen here:
Since that post I’ve been pulling my hair out trying to figure out a way to do this with a “developed” photo in Unreal. While the replies were helpful they didn’t get me far. Here’s what I’ve been thinking/working on:
Each photo has a SceneCapture2D component and a camera pointing at the front. The SceneCapture can be moved wherever, capturing the scene and sending it to the paper material to be developed (lerped).
Once developed and interacted with, I want to simulate the Viewfinder transition. I SetViewBlend with the front facing camera to center it like Viewfinder does.
But the actual transition is much more difficult.
The method I thought of for it involved using a “screenshot” material to take a freezeframe once the camera is centered. I’d put that on screen and simultaneously set the view back and teleport the player to the exact location and rotation of the SceneCapture. Lastly I’d lerp the freezeframe to the player’s real view (which will seem like an expanded version of the photo).
In my head this seems like a sound system but implementing it is proving really difficult. I created an ActorComponent for the transition to hold all the functions. I made this crappy PostProcess material intended to move a square out from the center of the screen, lerping from the freezeframe to the player’s view, with the RenderTarget coming from the FirstPersonCharacter. AI told me using this would get the screenshot of the player looking at the paper but it’s not working (shocking!)
Anyways, the point of this post is to ask for advice on a few things.
A failed previous attempt (ai…) involved centering the camera then lerping the player view with the papers SceneCapture (capturing every frame). The main issue with this is the perspective on the paper. As you can see in the third screenshot, the full RenderTarget is pasted onto the paper resulting in the image always stretching or squishing if the paper isn’t “16:9”
The Viewfinder transition is so seamless because its as if you were already at the location but your view is cropped into the terminal circle. The transition is just “uncropping” that circle (visually speaking). Point is, is it possible to replicate this so that the photo on the paper is basically just a cropped version of the full 16:9 RT?
The main question really though is, am I even approaching this correctly? If so, how would I properly get a “freezeframe” of the player looking at the paper? And how would I lerp it to the players view in the new spot?
Thank you for reading all of this and thank you in advance to anyone willing to help!