Dude, I just wanted to say - your tutorials are not only extremely helpful, and have been helping me overcome problems, but you are awsome to listen to. It is in the same way I would expect one of my friends to explain something to me, it is subtle, brilliant, and I genuinely enjoy the experience. By contrast, out here in the brambles, we are dealing with shit production effort, unintelligible broken English vinaculars, money grabs, outdated/bad advice, it is a warzone... But you my guy, are a nice bowl of hot soup, thank you.
I'm trying to add this to a clear force field, so it will glow blue when a model passes through it. But of course, my model itself doesn't have a visible distance field, so blah... But very cool video! This being is my first week using UE, so it may be a little too advanced for me to figure out. Lol I'm hoping I can still use once I smarten up on the subject. Haha
You could try adding an invisible shape (masked with an opacity of 1) to your character actor, however it might produce some odd shadows on the character itself
great video :D, thanks for keeping uploading tuts when it would be much easier for you to keep working on your game and just that. I value that a lot; this may come as offtopic but 2 weeks ago we got a new member in FeatLander, a veteran programmer, which allows me to finally start specializing into something, so I'm taking the chance to study materials (Ur vids + a course :D) and blender (blender guru tuts + course) so I can unleash that magic that happens when you combine coding with materials with models all in a intentional manner like you do, basically a technical artist or a programmer that can do art, whatever thats called.
i always wondered hwo they made the blob boss from little nightmares 2 (an unreal engine game) i guess this was used to drive that monster. because it was so smoothly stick to other surfaces.
Hi, Charlie, i've been follwing along with this, but my material is not reacting the way yours did with the color changing to whatever position it is in comparison to the cube When i hook DistanceFieldGradient into normalize then into base color it does not make my sphere relative to positioning EDIT: hey Charlie, wanted to let you know i discovered the problem is that in UE 5.3 you need to have [allow distance fields (experimental)] enabled
You'll need to use render targets or particles to achieve it - it's sort of impossible with just Distance Fields or material effects. Check out my Prismatiscape Plugin explanations of how it works :)
Yes! I figured that out, I think niagra would be a good option for me as I have experience in that rather than using render targets. Thanks a lot! Your videos are amazing !
This tutorial is really great. Thanks to this video, I was able to implement the effect I wanted to implement. However, there is a problem that I can't solve while experimenting with basic shapes like sphere and cone. Cube and cylinder create an area of DistanceToNearestSurface regardless of depth, but shapes like sphere and cone don't create an area according to depth or angle. Does anyone know a solution to this problem? The version of the engine I'm currently experimenting with is 5.2.1.
Hey Presmatica, I've been trying to use distance fields with your singlelayerwater's tutorial but seemingly having no luck. Are the two compatible or am I just doing something wrong? Mesh distance fields are on and I've been trying to wrap my head around it.
Hello, Charlie! Thank you for sharing knowledge. But can u help a little more with my question?:) Cant figure out how to make distance field mask (to nearest object node) but with all upper pixels included (up by world Z axi) Something like a cock tail with a dist field mask and projection it to the god’s clouds residence..
Hi Charlie, your videos are a tremendous help as I learn! However, im yielding a different result after completing this. I posted in the discord with pictures. I've watched a bunch but cant figure out what I must be doing wrong or setting that may be wrong.
When I tried this, I noticed weird shadows that started showing up on my deforming mesh? It seems to be caused whenever I use the DistanceFieldGradient>Normalized. No idea why
Hey there - unfortunately Distance Fields don't get applied in the Shadow Pass - it's super dumb haha. You can alleviate it by disabling shadows or using a Shadow Pass switch to try and get the shadows to stop self-casting
@@PrismaticaDev I did try those fixes initially to no avail. But I my issue ended up being something else. When I selected my (skeletal) mesh, I noticed that the outline of the mesh in the editor was deformed in such a way that would actually explain the weird shadows I was seeing on the mesh itself. Almost like a deformed invisible version of itself was casting shadows.. on itself even though the mesh itself did not appear deformed at all. This confused me as I was working with a 0-1 lerp in my logic, but it seems like in any fresh map I make, the DistanceFieldGradient was always returning 0,0,1 by default instead of 0,0,0 which I would have expected. My lazy fix was to just subtract 0,0,1 from the initial DistanceFieldGradient which zero'd out my logic and resolved it for me. (And I did try deleting all static meshes in the map, thinking that maybe the default floor was creating this upwards value but nope. Weird) Thanks for the pointers though
1:00 There is no color change according to the position like in the video. It just looks like a material screen in the world Generate Mesh Distance Field is on.. What can I do..
Hey hey! You need to disable "affect distance field lighting" on the object that is using the material, since the material will interact with its own distance fields. You might also need to enable something in your Project Settings about Distance Fields if that doesn't solve the issue
Hi. Sorry for my english. Can you show distance field on a small meshes objects? Because if I use small object my disrace field look like on triangle. Tanks.
Oooh that's an interesting one. I guess you would want to use the DistanceFieldGradient node, and mask out anything that is positive Blue/Z. However you wouldn't be able to guarantee that if a boat is sunk it won't mask out the water above it. It would also interact with everything else emitting distance fields (landscape, props etc)
Dude, I love your videos, please keep doing them! 2-10 mins is about my attentuíon span and you´ve got just the right balance between going through it as quickly as possible, while still mentioning the "this is why and how else you could do it"....
Can you convert from world to tangent space so it can follow a river flow (like a spline mesh for example)? Because rivers tend to bend and not fully respect one axis direction. Thanks!
Could you make a video of emissive materials in Lumen only light the environment to a certain distance and how to increase the distance, I am really struggling to get the effect as a backlit for a signage and when I move back the backlit slowly dissappears, I really appreciate you could help me out , thanks in advance
Hey hey there - emissives aren't really meant to replace traditional lights with Lumen, since distance fields can only extend a certain distance. I'd recommend combining a rect or spotlight with the emissive parts as a sort of "backup"
I have a question,if I want to blend to actor that both use the distanceMaterial,I mean I want to mix to mesh like water ，But it doest work out because I disable "Affect distance field lighting" in details option,it just work in only one actor ,not both ,how can I make it?
Thanks a lot for all your videos! i wonder if you can explain me how to use the virtual texture but only to the bottom of a mesh, i don't know if i'm clear but i need in a Waterfall material to put translucency when their is a rock in the water but only below the mesh, and currently with virtual textures it applies also on the top of the mesh :( which i don't need. Thanks a lot !
I have a water that ripples when you step on it but the ripples go on forever and it becomes really glitchy with multiple ripples. How can I use a distance field material to only ripple up to a certain distance away from the character and for the ripples to then finish there?
that's just name lol...i mean, blender 'guru' is doing podcast about nft, lazy tutorials have tutorials as long as 20 minutes, default cube is doing SDFs and 'don't get fooled by the new ue5 demo' gets you clickbaited so i think this one is actually pretty close to home...
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