Question about fading textures in a material

OrangeKnight96

Hi guys, 

I'm new here but I've seen a lot of support here for all things to do with Ue4, so I thought I'd try my luck and ask my own question here. 

I'm wanting to make a material that has a texture that pops in and then fades away, like raindrops on a surface. Now I know that I could use a flipbook animation node in my material, however, this does not provide me with the level of detail or control I want. On top of this, I want the illusion of the raindrops falling on and fading away individually. After a few days of playing around with different approaches like; using a flipbook node, using the time node to fade the texture with and if node & just having multiple textures fading in and out that are layered over each other. I'm now completely lost as to have to do this.

Any support or suggestions would be appreciated. I'm also more than happy to answer any questions. 

Thanks. 

harry1511

You may want to read this: https://deepspacebanana.github.io/deepspacebanana.github.io/blog/shader/art/unreal%20engine/Rainy-Surface-Shader-Part-1

OrangeKnight96

Thanks! this is really useful and I'm assuming this approach can be used for raindrops rather than ripples.

leleuxart

I needed to do something similar(raindrops instead of ripples) and ended up doing something a little simpler. I also tried out Sebastien Lagarde's method: https://seblagarde.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/water-drop-2b-dynamic-rain-and-its-effects/

I took his setup for the single texture with normal RG and two masks. Basically just add time and frac to step through the random greyscale mask, super simple.