Camera image planes? [question]

RossHildick3D

Hey,

Just wondering if there was a way of getting a camera to display a semi-transparent image overlay when looking through it? This would be useful for reference images and lining up shots to real world images etc.

The result would be something like this: (imagine the geo is not wireframe as this is a different software, in unreal the geo would obviously be solid)


Dont worry about how I would get the geo to fit - I would line up the camera with matchmove software - that's what I do.

** Its important that this would not be geo in the scene as I would like the image to fill the screen when looking through the camera and unaffected by the focal length etc. Much like an image plane setup in max or maya **

Failing that, I will just do this in Maya and import the camera but I'd really like to adjust the cinematic camera in unreal on the fly using this method

Thanks!

Obscura

Yes. You could add it as a blendable post process, with half opacity. Do you think this is ideal for what you would need it for?

RossHildick3D

Hey Obscura,

So I've been googling and reading about cameras in the hope that I could just give you a simple "Yes, Thanks" but it appears I am stupid - Could you explain how I would achieve such a thing? 

The closest I have got is as follows:


"M_REF" being a material with just a base colour - the reference image I want to use - applied. 

Cheers!

Obscura

In your material, put a scene texture node. Set it to post process input 0. That contains the rendered scene. Then put your texture. Plug screen position as coordinates into both. Put a lerp, and plud the scene texture node into A, your image to B, and make a scalar parameter, and plug that into that alpha of the lerp. Now make a material instance from this, and assign that as the blendable. You can set the opacity of your image over the scene, using the scalar parameter in the material instance.

RossHildick3D

Ah ok that makes sense. I am getting an error though and not sure how to resolve. Anything I'm doing wrong here? I'm using a post Process material, as you can see. Could this be it?


Sorry if this is nooby stuff

Obscura

Place a component mask after the scene texture, and use r,g,b. By default it output alpha as well , so thats float 4. and your texture is float 3, this is why it reports the error.

RossHildick3D

Ah, of course! Thanks! working now