Static mesh that swaps meshes

naked_chicken

So say you have a static mesh, you want to have that static mesh have multiple "versions" of itself that look different. Now you want to swap between versions of that object based on a button press.

So as an example, you have a statue of an elephant but when you press a button the statue remains, but now its a giraffe. That's an extreme example but it works.

Now here's the really complicated part, I want to dictate which version is drawing based on a screen depth mask I'm using... so in a bubble around the player you see the elephant but outside that bubble you see the giraffe.

Any ideas?

Simmo

Couldn't you just use LODs for that?

SirCalalot

Yeah, just make the LOD the second, different model to the original

Parkar

If you want to have it transtion between the two you could have both palced in the same spot and then have the material only be visible based on distance. Could even add some shader effects to hide the seam.

Xoliul

You don't need screen depth mask, just a round triggervolume with kismet switching meshes based on touch. The LOD thing could work as well but sounds a bit hackier.

naked_chicken

Thanks guys.

I kinda used Parkar's suggestion:



That's two different models (One just a little bigger than the other for testing purposes) and two different materials.

I chose this one because of the second half to this puzzle:

I want to be able to switch to the different versions of the object based on what key I press e.g. if I press E all my statues look like elephants, if I hit G then all my statues look like Giraffes. The distance blend was for the transition between the two, basically I want a pulse to go out from the character and as it goes out it switches everything to look different. My question is how do you tell it to swap between the correct versions? I need it to intelligently blend from elephant to giraffe, but if I press L then it has to know to go from giraffe to lion, and press A and it goes to aligator and then hit G and it goes back to giraffe and so on and so forth.
If it were a linear progression it would be easy, elephant to giraffe to lion to aligator, but it needs to be able to switch to any one at any time. Any direction would be much appreciated.

JamesTan

I've been reading the last paragraph a few times but I don't understand what you actually want to do?

A possible method is to perhaps use extreme morph blending?