This really must be magic, as even though you have fairly extensively outlined your process, I’m still not too sure how all this works. I’m not even sure what questions to ask. From the polygonal dissolve to the deep animated parallax of your portal, I’m just in awe. This is so cool. I don’t know what a stencil buffer is, but I’m going to find out!
I guess as I stare at this all glassy eye’d and slack jawed, I have only one question to build on at the moment; How long has it taken you to create something this sophisticated (all things being as relative as they may be)?
Thanks a lot @Mez
I mostly used the weekends of October to build the stuff. It started slow but became more time the nearer the deadline came
But in the end I was able to finish a bit earlier. All in all it probably sums up to a couple of working days, maybe 20-25 hours? Just a really rough guess.
Just a quick update for everyone interested in the source files:
The asset is now live on the store and can be purchased if you want to get the full effect ready for production (and the permission to use it commercially) :
I polished the effect a bit, put it gameready into a triggerable animator and cleaned up some unneeded showcase material (like the low poly environment from the challenge).
For everyone who doesn’t want to purchase the effect but is still interested in how to get it done:
Do not worry! I will still be happy to answer any questions and help you get something similar done for yourself It’s just a way for me to earn some pocket money and provide something valuable to other gamedevs in return. But I won’t stop helping everyone else out as well.
Any hints on how you accomplished this in UE4?
I’ve been working on something similar for a couple of days and getting nowhere with it. Best I can manage with the stencils is tinting using a post process volume.
I don’t use any stencil buffers. But the way my programmer explained it to me was that you need to locations - the pixel’s world location and camera’s world location. Then imagine you have a line between them. You have to calculate wheher that line passes through the circle of the portal or not - if it does, draw, if not, discard. So it’s a bunch of dot products working together with an IF statement in the Shader editor.
Unfortunately I can’t share it yet, but I’ll send you a private message with more info. I can do that for others as well, if interested. I will post it later here or in a new topic later on when I can.
I can’t really test it in AR and don’t know about the requirements. But it’s available in the asset store if you want to give it a try. Supports only legacy rendering right now though.
I came across this thread recently. Its something I’ve had some interest in developing. It would be cool if you could share the solution you came up with.
It’s just a way for me to earn some pocket money and provide something valuable to other gamedevs in return. But I won’t stop helping everyone else out as well.