I’m looking for a some help with an effect. The idea is to move an actor though the environment and making the environment glow where the actor is/was, then over time it slowly fades; for example:
It would be fairly easy to make the entire mesh/material light up via blueprint, but I’d prefer to only light up small areas of the mesh based on the actors world location to avoid having to mesh really carefully to avoid having entire wall sections glow. Could possibly use a parameter collection to pass the actors world location to the materials; however I have no idea how to go about translating the actor world location to mesh UV location.
I think that you should make a particle system that leaves a trail like that. If I were you I’d take a look at tire tracks particles (these are included in the Vehicle Game demo).
The glow is a bit of a placeholder atm; I know I want to do something to the environment as this little sprite/spark moves though the environment, just not sure exactly what. Going the material route gives me a lot of room to play with effects, be it emissive glow, roughness/metallic/colour change, or even something a bit odd like world displacement. The fade over time is desired but isn’t crucial; Giving the effect a large soft falloff and move the actor slower will kind of fake that. I’ll probably include a ribbon particle to add to the effect.