Hey guys, I’ve been working on a heat wave beam particle effect for a while and have been stumped on this one particular material issue for a while. I would like the refraction of the translucent material to only be applied where it is masked (so I can have it smoothly fade out around the edges) but even when I set opacity to 0 and refraction to 1, the effect and edge of the material is still clearly visible in the game world. It seems that refraction functions irrespective of the opacity value, so is it even possible to create a truly ‘see through’ effect in a translucent refraction material?
Are you able to post a screenshot of the setup? bit difficult to troubleshoot otherwise.
I made an extremely simplified version of my beam material that can, hopefully, demonstrate my issue. The material is setup as a surface translucent using the default lit shading model.
I’ve got an opacity mask, a normal and a base color channel that all work as expected. The problem shows up when I hook up both the refraction and normal channels at the same time. This is what the first image shows - there’s a sharp line where the beam ends on the top and bottom, because the normal/refraction is still visible. The third image shows what happens if I unplug just the normal map channel and the final image shows what happens if I unplug just the refraction channel. Both of these two work as expected but I can’t figure out how to use both and still use an opacity mask.
HI SVR33 -
What are your Beam Effect Settings in the example you are showing above?
Thank You
Eric Ketchum
Hi Eric,
This is almost certainly an issue (or lack of understanding, on my part) of the material setup, as this same issue happens if I apply the material to a static mesh, for example.
Hey -
I am looking at your setup and with the exception of your Mask perhaps wanting to be more defined (increased contrast) there is not much that I would change.
Here is a sample project where I have setup a similar arrangement, take a look.
Thank You
Eric Ketchum
You’re my hero, haha! I don’t exactly know why using the two power nodes multiplied together, as the opacity mask, is different from the result I get using the texture I created in PS, but it absolutely is. I copied your nodes over and replaced my texture mask and it’s working beautifully, now. Now, if I could just figure a way to fade out the start and end points of the beam…
Thanks Eric!