Quick shine material

Patrikwindahl

Hi! I'm trying to create a material that does a quick shine/glow now and then so the item that has the material gets the players attention. I have tried to find an example of what I'm trying to achieve, it's a classic trick used to get the players attention.

I would really like to know how i can set up a material to glow/shine for a short period of time, for example, every 5 second. I hope my question is clear enough, or i will try to rephrase it!

Thanks alot!

blankslatejoe

The way I usually do this sort of this is to use a ramp in the material. Set up a material that has both the shiney and notshiney states, and then lerp between them. The trick would be to use a long texture as a 'ramp', like 1pixel by 256x, mostly black with a single pixel of white in the middle (or a few pixels blurred if you want the effect to be softer). Then have a time-to-panner nodecombo plugged into the UVs of that. You then can slow down the panner until the texture scrolls through the lerp at the right pace, making the object switch between shiney/notshiney

Xendance

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsCompendium.html#Sine

blankslatejoe

Ah, I'd forgotten about that. Using a sine node will certainly work too, but it'll be a VERY rhythmic pattern. It's less instructions too though, so that's good. But be sure to use an ABS on it or clamp it or else itll pass beyond the 0-1 range.

Using a texture ramp will give you precise control, at the cost of a texture sample and a handful of instructions.

goodluck!

Patrikwindahl

Thanks a lot! I'll try both techniques

Patrikwindahl

blankslatejoe wrote: »

The way I usually do this sort of this is to use a ramp in the material. Set up a material that has both the shiney and notshiney states, and then lerp between them. The trick would be to use a long texture as a 'ramp', like 1pixel by 256x, mostly black with a single pixel of white in the middle (or a few pixels blurred if you want the effect to be softer). Then have a time-to-panner nodecombo plugged into the UVs of that. You then can slow down the panner until the texture scrolls through the lerp at the right pace, making the object switch between shiney/notshiney

I'm not so good with the material editor, and would love to see a screenshot of a material with that setup!