2D, 2.5D With Mix Of 3D Rendering (Transparency Issues)

NickZucc
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 04:41:21 +0000
Rendering

So I am really in love with [Ubisoft’s Raymand Legends][1] and Moon Studio’s [Ori And The Blind Forest][2], being inspired by their work I wanted to see if it was possible to build a similar look in UE4.

Right out the gate I have hit a huge road block, it has to do with the way UE4 draws transparency and deals with the draw order for it’s shapes.

I have tried the paper 2d sprite method but currently I couldn’t get the sprites to cast or receive shadows, it also seemed rather limited with what I can do with the sprites themselves. I am using bones and animating a mesh with color and alpha to produce the final look. UE4 seems to be a bit behind Unity as far as being able to build a 2D puppet directly in the engine and being able to animate that puppet. But even Unity doesn’t have true bone deformation for their sprite sheets, unless you use a 3rd party plugin. [Pupet2D Looks rather promising][3]

If I use the shader method of masked V.S. translucent I can get things to look pretty good but there is no gradation in the transparencies. This works in some cases.

So if I do use the translucent method, I get no shadows and there is no control over the draw order of the pieces.

So unless I am mistaken, it may be impossible for me to get the look that I am going for in UE4 due to the way transparency currently works. I know transparency issues is on Epic’s radar, but when will this be addressed? We have this beautiful rendering engine but something as crucial as transparency is still an issue in many different areas of rendering in UE4.

I’m posting a shot of how things look like in Maya as well as UE4, Maya is using viewport 2.0 and I am using their depth peel method for transparency sorting. This is the look that I hope to achieve in UE4.

Also as the game is moving, this type of rending to cards can at times become blurry and hard to read correctly, I have tried to disable mipmaps, depth of field and also motion blur, but none of these things completely get rid of the issue. It is hard to describe what is going on other than to say with movement the 2D art becomes hard to read.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

20 posts - 1 participant