Blending between meshes in UE4 like in Gears of War Judgement

Jack M. · Apr 2016

So I've been experimenting with creating a material that can act as a transition between a terrain or floor and a wall for example. I've got it narrowed down pretty well and am getting close to a solution I think.

The issue I currently have is it appears the skylight in the scene has more influence over my translucent material than it does on my opaque material. It's almost like there's a multiplier I need to turn off somewhere that I can't seem to find.

Here's my scene with the skylight set to 0 and then set to 1. Also here's a render of my material in it's current state.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/j8/ly49l0d7iv34.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/rd/xtydypkc75yb.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/ka/cp09w5g0ym5m.jpg

These are some screenshots from a Gears of War Judgement art dump. That's the effect i'm trying to achieve, but it's proven to be quite difficult to achieve in UE4.

Image: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2863/9512299398_15e94474f6_o.jpg

Image: http://i575.photobucket.com/albums/ss191/joshandcaroline/Steps1.jpg

As you can see Gears of War judgement looks good and matches the opaque materials exactly. Any help on this would be great as I've been banging my head against this wall for a while now.

Obscura · Apr 2016

Looks like depth fade to me. Try setting the fade distance to something small like 5.

Jack M. · Apr 2016

Yeah, Joshua Marlow in his Gears of War Judment dump said it was depth fade. As you can see though I am using that in my material. The issue is the brightness of the translucent material increases more than the opaque material I have on my terrrain when I increase the intensity of my skylight.

When I set the skylight intensity to 0 they blend nicely. When I set the intensity to 1 the translucent material with depth fade looks quite a bit brighter than the material on the terrain. It only gets worse the brighter it gets.

Xendance · Apr 2016

Have you tried another lighting mode on the translucent material? Right now it seems to be "volumetric directional" which doesn't sound right. Try surface or some other maybe?

kernersvillan · Apr 2016

We have something in UE4 now called PixelDepthOffset which is really awesome. Here is a result of an opaque snow pile. https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1592/25069952444_2be2dcb7f8_h.jpg

here is a screenshot on how to use it. Its all controlled using a mask. Of course it can get more complicated, but this will get you started.

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1598/26426287760_f17a557471_b.jpg

Jack M. · May 2016

Wow, that's fantastic. Thanks for the information. I'm going to give it a shot and see how it turns out.

Jack M. · May 2016

It's pretty rough at the moment but with some tweaking and getting world aligned textures going I think this is going to work well for me.

Blending between meshes in UE4 like in Gears of War Judgement

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