Render object to RenderTarget, but not Camera.

Development Rendering
1

I’m working on a flight sim where the HUD renders targets over certain objects in the scene. These are toggleable BillboardComponents on the aircraft themselves and scale with distance.

I’d like to render these exclusively to a seperate RenderTarget which I later do a post-process on (scanlines, etc.) and recombine over the scene render, but NOT to the main player camera render pass as well. I’m finding it difficult to achieve this.

For the SceneCaptureComponent2D component, I’ve disabled everything in “General Show Flags” except Translucency which allows the Render Target to only pick up the billboards. However, every attempt I make to prevent drawing on the camera also disables it for the render target as well.

Is it possible to prevent rendering for the Camera that the SceneCaptureComponent2D is attached to?

(put simply, can I keep the RT result on the right, while hiding the green HUD objects on the left)

2

Is it simply to toggle the effect on/off based on player input or event(s)? How about making a separate object to render to, a mesh plane or something, and then switching the RT to render to the plane when not in use for the HUD.

3

Sorry for the delay in replying. In the end I completely gave up on the MaterialBillboards and the RenderTarget and moved everything into the UI and used a UMG RetainerBox with a material that lets me add some extra glitchiness and scanlines for a nice effect.

Also I noticed that the Billboards appear in metallic surface reflections, even when you disable that option in the billboard settings. I’m not sure if that’s a bug or not.