The Time Node | 5-Minute Materials [UE4] 

You're cool xoxo

Shaders are always run "on tick" in a sense - the rendering process for every shader happens every single frame. The Time node is more like accessing a global variable than actually executing anything.

Also, when you have multiple nodes doing the exact same thing the shader compiler will simplify that in to 1 local variable so that instruction only gets processed once

@@PrismaticaDev Thank you for following up. That's really insightful to know.

Cheers Paul :) Glad to have you with us!

Perfect! You could even overlay Sines of different periods for a bit more randomness

Awesome to hear :) Glad you found it entertaining and educational

Great question! The reason that happens is because time is just the session time - the longer the session is active, the higher the value. So if you’re 1 second in to a session and multiply by 2, the difference is 1. However if it’s 1000 seconds in to the session and you multiply by 2, the difference is 1000. To combat this, you’ll likely want to manually increment a number in a blueprint somewhere. So adding some number to a variable on tick, and then to change the speed you’ll change the number that is being added. If you’re working with a panning texture, you’d add a direction (2vector) instead of a float.

@@PrismaticaDev Thanks so much for your explanation! That makes perfect sense! I did end up creating "Fake Time" via a Timer component that controls the speed. I have a follow-up question. Why does it work if I have a unaltered multiplier placed in the time node? Wouldn't that cause the same issue? From my experience, if I leave an unaltered multiplier, time does go faster, but it doesn't exponentially scale up. Is the idea that it is doing the same thing, but visually it isn't being perceived that way since the increments are all uniform?

Yep, the increments are all uniform so the effect moves at a constant rate. If you alter the multiplier it will also be constant, the only problem is when you -gradually- alter the multiplier@@passtarplus

@@PrismaticaDev Thanks so much for the answer!!!

You could definitely use it to rotate an object entirely in the shader, or even just a very bright emissive texture! UE4 is such a big engine, there's so much to explore haha. If you need a hand with anything don't forget to join our Discord :)

@@PrismaticaDev thanks! I've already joined ;) Definitely I'll need a lot of hints. I'm going towards of creating a 3rd person mmo survival, with endless world

@@paniot8414 Unreal Engine 5 apparently will have some awesome features for huge worlds, so I'm sure it's definitely going to be doable!

@@PrismaticaDev what I really do regret now is that I haven't started learning UE years ago. But I could and should have better done that long time ago. Anyways, never is too late lol

@@paniot8414 it's never too late to start learning :) Game design is something you can apply all of your previous skills to as well

wait..will reply myself lol....in that case I will just avoid time node, then use a float parameter and control the time value of that float just in blueprints :)

You could also send the “start time” as a one-off blueprint setting and then subtract that from the Time node to get a timer inside the material without needing to set a parameter on tick :)

@@PrismaticaDev may you make some easy example of that? :)

I didn't know how cool YOU are ;) All good! More than welcome :)

do the needful and take a shower, sir. love from pakistan

You could, by setting a variable like “start time” and subtracting it from Time, and dividing the result by how long you want it to be until it reaches 1. However, there is a node called Decal Opacity Lifetime or something which is perfect for your issue :)

@@PrismaticaDev thank you very much : )