I have a main player character with many materials. What is the correct way to add functionality to make my entire character translucent based on certain game state? (say 0.5f opacity)
I CANNOT modify the materials directly as I regularly get refreshes from the 3D artist.
What is the correct way to programmatically achieve this in C++?
Ask the artist to expose a parameter? Perhaps you could suggest using:
Since there are many materials at play. Your job would be to update one global variable.
Is there no other solution?
The character mesh has material instances. It will be very complicated to change each model refresh.
No.
And for performance reasons, you really only want one material on things, unless you are deling with a cinematic.
Hey there @plot_wombat_0y! I agree with Everynone and MH, the most effective option is to get the artists on board using a specified material parameter collection, and you won’t have to adjust them whenever the refreshes come through. Defining the parameters ahead of time for the artist pipeline is a good idea to save you the effort adjusting things constantly. That said, if the artists are iterating often enough to where it will damage your own workflow, it’s probably not at an ideal time to be locking down material effects.
Do you have a reference where I could learn more about this?