udk transition materials
polycounter lvl 7
I've been playing around with material transition effects for a bit. Seeing what certain textures do and what values change results. Here's a short clip of some results.
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-oNlP5770k&feature=plcp"]UDK - Texture Transition Testing - YouTube[/ame]
I've seen this effect used in a number of places and realized that it's a great way to remove objects from game play as well. By plugging this into the opacity channel or even some type of tessellation effect, some great results can be achieved. If anyone's got extra info on this I'd like to hear it. Thanks!
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-oNlP5770k&feature=plcp"]UDK - Texture Transition Testing - YouTube[/ame]I've seen this effect used in a number of places and realized that it's a great way to remove objects from game play as well. By plugging this into the opacity channel or even some type of tessellation effect, some great results can be achieved. If anyone's got extra info on this I'd like to hear it. Thanks!
Replies
Care to share your process?
I go through most of what I did to create this effect and try to explain how the IF node is used with this.
http://danpaz3d.tumblr.com/post/26742825968/thoughts-on-texture-transition-fx
Cheers for posting the blog too
My favourite transition in the video has to be the first one, as I don't think I have ever seen anything like it.
From the second picture and what i can understand. The scalar paramater which is A handles the transition. The texture sample in B is the effect/texture that displays as it transitions, so in your video it would be the blue/orange epic looking glowy effect, but the texture you have displayed there is simply black/white/greyscale, so how did you getting the glowy blue effect?
I understand that A<B is the starting texture for the object and A=B and A>B is the ending texture once the transition is complete. Im curious as to why the same texture is in both of those slots because i just assumed there would be one slot for start texture and one for end, whats the middle one do?
The more complex example i'll need to look at when its not 1am >_>. This is super interesting and thank you so much for sharing! Thanks for listening to my nooby questions!
The glow effect is the 2nd example (the more 'complex' one). The first one is just a simple transition between 2 textures.
As for the A<B, A=B, A>B it's a coding/math thing. Just think if the IF node was just A<B and A>B...what would happen if A=B? I've done some testing and found that it doesn’t have any significant visual impact. So, you can put the A<B texture to the A=B input, or anything for that matter, but it's better to have a texture/value that is already being used. Note that there has to be an A=B value.
Not sure about doing a full-on tutorial yet...I was hoping the blog post would answer most questions.
Hope this helped!
I noticed that the glow, in itself, very specifically grows and pops up from the normals, before having the 'mask' kick in and transition the remaining of the way.
Did you Mul all the Normal Channels to create a mask from it? Or did you De-saturate?
It gave me an error saying that IF input B must be type float.
No idea what that means, what am i missing?
It means that the B input texture you've connected is using the RGB output (the little black connector) which is a vector which is 3 float values of the texture sample. For the B input you need one float value so.... either the red channel (as I have done) or green or blue. But only one of them.
Hope this helped!
from blog post
http://dp3dblog.tumblr.com/post/26742825968/thoughts-on-texture-transition-fx
http://eat3d.com/vfx
The main reason I posted here was to see if anyone else has done something more interesting...
Anyways, you should try experimenting with some of the sine and cosine nodes in the material editor. these bounce between the values of 0-1 and can yield interesting results when applied to the A or B values of the 'if' statement. This would automate the control of the transitions so you can edit your material in the editor rather than having to use the param callout every time to check out your effect.
Who cares if that was where he got it from anyway? Everything we learn we learn from other people. I didn't know this was possible until i saw this thread (new to UDK) and i was quite excited to learn about it. I think it was a little rude of you to come in here so accusingly. He did not say 'hey this has never been done before look how awesome i am' He came here and showed us what he did and asked for more info if anyway had it.
We've all seen a barrel a hundred times before but no-one is mean to the new people who make one and want feedback, this is no different.
On another note. I showed a friend this at school today and a couple other material transition vids on youtube, he made a couple of neat effects, although he did use a different material setup. I am going to learn the process and create a tutorial for fun including the matinee part. I appreciate you posting this thread here and opening my eyes to more stuff in UDK
Thanks darkleopard! Be sure to share a link to your tutorial here when its done. I'd like to see what other people can do with this.
Have a dark primary colour and a light secondary colour. Go Filter->Render->Fibers and play with the values before applying. That's it!
Cheers for the reply, it seems like you derived from the mask like usual and not the normal map, cheers!
Ive completed the tutorial. I hope you dont mind me including a link to your blog Dan, i wanted to make sure i credited the person who i found the original material from. Just let me know if you want it removed.
Ive posted it in the tutorials section of my website here (under the intermediate section). Let me know if theres something not explained correctly. I spent most of the day on this (as i was learning it at the same time) Im sure there's a mistake somewhere. Welcome to PM for any questions and i'll try to help. Hope this is useful for some people!
While im here, im curious if anyone knows a way to set an activation based on camera distance from either the material editor or inside a post process chain (or world post process chain settings) I am working on a heat distortion effect and I have not found a way to control the distance it activates from.