Render only within a volume

Development Rendering
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Hello all,

I’m working on creating a functional holographic table for a VR/AR simulation and I’m trying to figure out how to accomplish the effect.

Hologram
Hologram1920×947 196 KB

I thought that there might be a volume within unreal that only renders polygons/objects that are inside it. That would allow me to transform a terrain mesh in the x and y creating that ‘materializing out of thin air effect’ as the terrain moves. Some have suggested using masks on materials and I have gotten that to work somewhat, but I need to place objects like map markers on the surface and have them move with the terrain and I haven’t worked out the logic for that. Also, the client has indicated that they may want particle systems to be placed on the surface that I might not be able to apply the masked material to. I just thought that a render volume object would save me a ton of pain if such a thing exists. If not, I could use suggestions on how best to accomplish this. Below is an example I created with masked materials.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oeIdDm_BWrHDeyj0cx0rnJLRqaSaHLjN/view?usp=drive_link

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To properly work would likely be a combination of: (1) masked materials associated with a “render box” for the terrain and (2) a “render box” for the game objects like markers and particle effects. May or may not be the same box but they’d have to line up.

Either way, that concept art is quite nice and looks like a real fun project to work on.

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Thanks for your reply. Believe me, if I knew what I was doing I’d be having the time of my life. I only got this task because I mentioned that I have an interest in VR. I’m out of my depth here.

1 Like
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By the way, what do you mean by “render box”?