Ghost trail material

tuxmask75

Hey guys , Im looking to create a similar ghost trail effect as seen in this video. ( without particle systems) [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3211qifCGc"]UDK Laser Trail Effect - YouTube[/ame]

what I have done already is set up a player pawn kismet nod rig that passes the pawn position to a material instance. inside the material instance there is a circular gradient that moves around, its also set up as a mask to blend between 2 colors, ( however i'd like to be able to leave a sort of ghost trail behind as the gradient moves around the UVs.

Is there a way to pull off a ghost trail effect inside an actual material ?!

tuxmask75

For this sort of shader to work would we need access to the render buffer or something?

Vailias

Why without particle systems?
The trail particle is built for just that.

To do it in the material you'd need to essentially build a trail mathematically.
for really short trails you potentially could distort the circular gradient along the direction of motion of the laser point, but the long tail would not work.

The only way I can think to replicate your effect in a material would be a render to texture function, which no, we cannot do in UDK.

tuxmask75

I've already got the pawn position linked to displacing the snow around them via the displacement map.
Im going for a pawn moving threw deep snow making a path behind where they traveled.

I guess the mathematical way would work, Not sure where to start on this one.

sprunghunt

If you could pass a rotation value from an object in kismet then you could probably use the rotation node in the material editor to at least have a bitmap that aligns itself to the direction of travel.

Vailias

Ah ok.

Try adapting this gem: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitGemsRealTimeDeformation.html