Udk material planet bombarment.

SnakeDoctor

Hey guys I am currently creating a space scene for my portfolio and have made a lot of progress on the planet shader that I am doing.



The final thing I would like to do with this material is to make it look like its being bombarded almost like 14 seconds into this video.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GImJdrCSOFA[/ame]

I cant think of a way to this in the material editor. I am still fairly new at using it so there is a big possibility that I am unfamiliar with an expression or two. Any help at all would be appreciated. Thanks again :-D

Ace-Angel

Create a second set of UV's (or third if you have a second one).

Make sure the are you want bombarded is flat and no stretching.

Create an 'Atlas' type of textures (the kind used for flipping books or sprites in games).

Marry your base planet shader with the fancy shamncy set of functions that are working with your second UV channels and voila done.

I'm not sure how doable this is in UDK, but it should be fine. I'm sure someone more versed in UDK can show you with a few screenshots.

Kurt Russell Fan Club

You probably shouldn't try to do that in the shader. If you did, you'd need a separate subtree of your material dedicated to each explosion, which would increase the number of instructions for every pixel each time that you added a new explosion. The Unreal way is to add a particle system and dynamic light for each little explosion, and I think knowing that and saying it would help your folio.

But if you want to do it anyway, you can of course The actual function depends on the mapping, but here's how to do it like Ace-Angel said, with the default Unreal mapped sphere. The green 2d vector at the end is how you position the splosion.

Ace-Angel

Yes, Kurt is right, sorry, been on a Max Shader binge lately, shaders as he said are doable...a particle based system however would be much more dynamic and better suited for such things.

Kurt Russell : Hey, wanted to ask, would be a good idea to create two mesh instead of one and have the particle in the middle?

What I mean is the first mesh is the planet, the second is the fog/clouds/ozone that is slightly pushed out, and the particles would be in the middle, and still be affected by the color gradient and such from the clouds?

Or is a waste of resources without much in return?

SnakeDoctor

Ok, I know nothing of the particle systems in UDK, but I have been meaning to learn it. So correct me if I am wrong would I just create a particle system the is being spawned from a sphere and then somehow apply it to a material or would I have to put the particle system into the middle of my planet and scale it upwards until it can be seen from the outside?

RAL

If you decide to go with a particle you should use the "Sphere" module:

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ParticleSystemReference.html#Sphere

In its properties you can set the size so that it matches up with the scale of your planet mesh. Also make sure to turn on "Surface Only" so that all your sprites spawn on the outside. Hope this helps.

sprunghunt

You could just place the particle systems on the outside of your sphere and trigger them using matinee.

If you want this to be a gameplay element you need to make the particle systems part of the hispang for a weapon.

SnakeDoctor

I got a very basic particle system in place right now, but for some reason its showing up in the editor but disappears when I play the game. As a test I tried one of Unreals own particle system and it works just fine.

SnakeDoctor

Nevermind I figured out that part, turns out my material was set to phong instead of unlit. I dont know why that affects it, but it does.