Hi, thanks for the reply.
The last post explains the current issue with transparent materials. Ideally a 100% opaque material using the transparent pipeline should be completely indistinguishable from a material using the opaque pipeline. This is probably impossible, but it’s a good guideline - the further away the final result is from the opaque shader, the worse the implementation. Right now if you make a 100% opaque material it looks really awkward. Polygons that should be behind sometimes appear in the front, etc. It looks like it’s z-fighting with itself.
The issue with reflections is not just planar reflections. Right now the transparent shader looks completely alien and out-of-place. There are lots of semi-transparent objects which are undoable in UE4, if anything because they look outlandish when stripped away from the main rendering pipeline. A generic glass of water with refraction can fool someone by using a simple specular, but a gelatinous mass can’t - it’s either 100% opaque and being affected by the proper environment lighting, or semi-transparent and really weird-looking.
Yes, but I get a flat, weird-looking water then. It’s either that or using the opaque water from the Mobile demo.
I read you guys got creative with the water in the Cave demo by using multiple planes but, alas, it’s not available.