Widget Interaction Component in screen space

Dragoon-scales · February 10, 2022, 10:36am

Hi,

I’m trying to create button where you aim at it to press it (no mouse cursor, but you should be able to click to press the button).

Basically I have an NPC with a widget component attached to it, and a widget interaction component attached to my player character. When I setup the widget in world space everything works correctly. But as I don’t want it to create shadows or be occluded, I want it in screen space but the widget interaction component on my character doesn’t seem to work anymore (no hover reactions and can’t click on the buttons).

Example of what I’m trying to achieve: UI_ref.mov - Google Drive

HAF-Blade · February 10, 2022, 10:41am

Perhaps this helps

Dragoon-scales · February 10, 2022, 10:57am

Thanks , but it only works in world space for me.

Everynone · February 10, 2022, 11:52am

In my understanding this should not work. The interaction component traces against the quad geometry generated by the widget component’s world space setting. Afaik, this quad is not there while we’re in screen space.

But as I don’t want it to create shadows or be occluded,

Both can be disabled. The only downside is that 3d widgets are nowhere nearly as crisp.

Occlusion:

Shadows:

Widget Components do not cast shadows?

Dragoon-scales · February 11, 2022, 8:40am

Thank you for your help, in my case they have shadows (following image).

It would be better to have them in screen space anyway. Do you have an idea how to reproduce the behavior of the widget component interaction in screen space? I thought about a virtual mouse but it doesn’t seem to be a good solution in UE.

Edit: With the solution you gave me, widgets don’t have shadows and are not occluded anymore.

Edit 2: And you’re right, it’s very blurry in world space. I can’t have a clear text, it’s always blurry.

Dragoon-scales · February 14, 2022, 9:27am

SOLVED for me at least but this is a dummy solution I think.

For the occlusion I followed Everynone solution :

And for the text being blurry :

Increase the widget component draw size 2
Decrease the widget component scale by 2

Everynone · February 14, 2022, 9:35am

Are you still getting consistent hit results with this?

Also, if your widget is transparent:

May or not may not help. Depends on the scene setup.

Dragoon-scales · February 14, 2022, 10:00am

Yes the hit results are still consistents. I’m just wondering about performance with this but that’s another question.

Everynone · February 14, 2022, 10:04am

You’re going to have how many on the screen at a time? Fewer than 10? Negligible is what I’d describe the worst case scenario.

Dragoon-scales · February 14, 2022, 10:10am

Okay nice, i just noticed that the solution to remove occlusion doesn’t remove reflection. Any ideas on that?

Everynone · February 14, 2022, 10:45am

Widgets reflect. Or are reflected?

Dragoon-scales · February 14, 2022, 10:56am

Widgets are reflected :

Everynone · February 14, 2022, 11:45am

My knowledge here is limited.

Someone will hopefully correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think you can disable reflections on per object basis; that’d be to due to the way PBR works and the whole deferred rendering pipeline.

You can use a post process volume or a camera to adjust intensity of the reflections. A value of 0 would disable them all, this can be adjusted dynamically - as soon as the widget pops up or goes away.

Consider posting a new question in the rendering section, perhaps someone more knowledgably can chip in.

Dragoon-scales · February 14, 2022, 11:47am

Thank you for your help!