I am wondering when the wind node in the material editor will finally be able to take a wind actor as its source. At the moment it is still a vector4 input, which is kinda annoying to setup if you want it to be responsive to any placed wind actor in the scene. I mean, it is not just a useful node for making foliage wave, but it has loads of other applications too. The UDK was able to use it, so why is it still missing in UE4?
Right now I need to set it up as an external variable within a blueprint, expose its variables, send those into the material using parameters and have it update that way. Seems kinda overkill for something that was available before.
I checked the node, but from what I can see the node is limited to windspeed, which unfortunately is not what I am looking for.
The good thing about the windnode in UDK was that I could use its position on top of the speed and strength, so I could dynamically update certain wind-direction specific terrain effects (like sleet against walls). Right now I need to handle all of that by setting up a material parameter collection, make sure that the data of the wind actor is being passed into the level script and have those variables update the parameter collection. It’s not exactly a pretty workaround, but what’s most annoying about it is that it doesn’t update in the editor unless I hit the play button, meaning I will have to change the actor, hit play, quit, change the actor again, and so on, if I want to do any modifications to the wind direction.
