UE4 - Outline Material to Highlight Objects when Looked at Them
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 พ.ค. 2022
- Tutorial on how to create an Outline effect when looking at an Object
This video is an answer to comments from GorudenPanda and JuggernautX as well a great thing to learn!
A thousand thanks to video from UnrealCG that made it possible to make my own tutorial for the Epic Community!
Link to his video: • Selection Outlines Wit...
Knowledge covered:
-How to make an Outline Effect
-Materials and Material Instances
-Overlaps and Overlap Events
-Why Component, not a LineTrace?
-Is Valid node and Validity
Download: drive.google.com/file/d/1ZxAp...
Thanks to Infectedfury for the "Strike A Pose" that gives some life into my Character!
www.unrealengine.com/marketpl...
Thumbnail Text created using cooltext.com
Credits for the amazing music used in this video:
-Patrick Patrikios
-Telecasted
-NEFFEX
-Mini Vandals
-DivKid
-French Fuse
-TrackTribe - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
instead of using a cylinder overlap event you can use a sphere trace as its cheaper and you only get the actor thats nearest to the center of the sphere trace and set the actor of what is its hitting
Pretty smart technique. I actually wanted the whole texture to just be brighter but this is useful too. Thanks.
Thanks!
You can also check the other videos about Highlighting - one with LineTrace and Two Materials, the other is with Collision Shape (Spherical Area) and Single Dynamic Material Instance if you need something else ;]
You say "Wonderful" just like Zoidberg and I love it! excellent tutorial by the way, subbed!
That’s wholesome! ❤️🔥 Thank you 🙏🍻
Thank you! This worked really well for me in UE5. In my case I also had to get the relative transform of the original mesh and apply it to the newly created mesh, but that is easy enough. Do you have any idea how this would work on a rigged, animated character? Is there an easy way to map the animation pose onto the newly created mesh?
That’s a good question, well, you could duplicate the skeletal mesh and it’s animation etc. and run a loop on all materials to change the Material but it may be expensive 🤔 but still a workaround ;)
For people that are having issues applying the Outline material with UE5:
- Use the "Overlay Material" option on the Actor (click details and type overlay on the search bar) and apply the material there
- At the end of the On "Component Begin Overlap" (after the for loop) use the Set Overlay Material node
That should work fine
That’s the spirit! 💪
Thank you for this as it really helps out those who are struggling on UE5 with that. That’s really awesome ❤️🔥
@@UnrealSolver No, thank you for this great solution! A lot of people out there are using Volumes to achieve this but that doesn't work for me on my project since that is really hard to maintain :)
@@AlignmentsProg Thank you for your kind words Bro!
Still it's not my own idea, as mentioned in the Video it's @UnrealCG who made it all possible so huge thanks to him in the first place ^_^
how did you get the item overlapped actor 4:33 ?
Select the Component you want to check and add an event called “OnBeginOverlap”
Great video! But can you please tell me, can this technique be used on glass objects? Because in my case all glass parts get colored.
You would like to add Transparency to your Material that works as the outline and make it partially transparent
The thing is that it takes the full object so from behind it is totally visible and non-transparent
Just add a new Scalar Parameter so you can control it and use as Transparency power
@@UnrealSolver , thanks for answer! With chosen Blend mode and Shading model (like in your video) I can't make outline material partially transparent, because Opacity node is grayed out =(
UPD: Well, I've fixed it, thanks!
I can't get this to work in 5.2
I changed Overlay Material option on the actor and the mesh is constantly highlighted...
On the end of component begin overlap i used set overlay material node but nope, nothing is highlighting at all...
Hi, I do not use UE5 as for now, please check comment from Mr. @AlignmentsProg :)
@@UnrealSolver I got it to work from his comment thank god haha. Thanks very much for the tutorial
Thank you for the tutorial :)
I'm having trouble getting my material to work though. It seems whenever I change my material to be the outline material I made it doesnt keep the old material and outline covers everything :/ Do you know where I may have messed up?
Maybe you are also changing Color of the main mesh instead of the created one as additional mesh working as the outline, hard to tell without any blueprint insight but that’s the only thing I can think of
Hop on to my Discord so I can take a look on that ;)
@@UnrealSolver Dude, thx for the super fast reply :) Yes, I'll check your discord right now
Any idea why cylinder might not follow camera?
Possibly wrong attachment in the components hierarchy, maybe you attached it to the pawn or something else but not camera 🤔
Thanks for tutorial, its been very useful for me. I am a begginer in this, but i was sure that was a way to do with line trace and... after yesterday night and today i found the solution xDD..... Just tre more things and some less... No itemoverlapper, no cast to char for 'highlighted object'.... just a boolean in both cases (Creation and destroy material flows), one BpInterface(Char and item) to call a custom event when do the line trace... this even its just for creation flow that begin with a branch to check the new boolean variable 'HighlightState', for example, and only if false we do de creation flow (since add mesh component), and addig in the end our boolean setting it in true, branch in false kept empty. Creation Flow its done, destruction its always easily xD.
To other flow we have to do only two things; in character blueprint we promote a variable the pin actor hit from our line trace function, and do the call for function of the interfaceBP with actor hit as target. In item side, we do a event tick to conect with a branch (delay recomended for less Ram Use in largest levels), we check if hit actor its the same of self (item), if false then conect destruction flow (Since is valid from outline mesh), and adding to the end set our highlited boolean to false.
Its ready... thanks was easy at the end but i try a thousand of ways before xD... Really thanks.
Wow, that was an exhaustive message bro ❤️🔥
I’m glad it helped you to move your Project forward! 🔥🔥🔥
YES! YES! LOVE IT
I am happy to hear that!
FYI, if you don't want to subtract for a ForLoop operation, use LastIndex instead of Length of your array.
Why would it have been a mistake to use ForEachLoop instead, though?
Dang, you’re totally right about it!
Although I know there are things like that or f.ex. An array - if I need a random I still use a “get” node and a random integrerem instead of “get random” from array 🤣
Thanks for correcting, those are bad habits kept since ever 😅
And about this being a “mistake” - well, maybe not a mistake as it’s possible to get same results using this kind of loop as well but would need some more code and I wanted to simplify it
A wrong word selection here, my bad 😅
This solution looks nice for a simple static meshes. What to do if I have a car Actor with let's say 4 wheels, one body part, 2 mirrors etc. and I want to be able to highlight the whole car Actor?
You can perform a Loop, get the Actor all Components to get an array and apply the logic to all parts (create new same Mesh and set the Material)
My cylinder has no collision unless the player is moving
I have no idea why this is happening, do you have any ideas?
Well, that’s weird, without screenshots may be hard, shouldn’t happen by default and only think I can imagine is that you have some piece of code making it happen
Check the About section of my Profile - you will find link to my Discord where I can take a look on it
@@UnrealSolver alr, sounds good
I have a very simplified version btw, it just renders in custom depth when overlapped
Is there a way to disable highlighting through walls?
A good approach would be using Tags - add some tag f.ex. “Highlight”
Then on the BeginOverlap - use a node “has Tags” to check wether given BP/Object has this Tag and if yes - perform the code
But this video got some questions I will probably make a separate video for this and also using Traces or some different (better than this weird component approach) System anyway 😁
I have a static mesh actor component , and when I over lap over it for some reason dosent register the action. My work around was to add a normal static mesh and for it every thing work. Dose anyone have a clue why with a static mesh actor component dosent work?
Are you sure the Mesh itself has Collisions (simple collision) AND in the Blueprint Editor the Component has “overlap/hit events” turned on?
Make sure the mesh has a collision and enable the overlap option and try again ;)
@@UnrealSolver You are right I dont generate overLap events for my mesh component. Thank for your help ! And I have another question : How can I make my Box Collison ignore the cylinder ? Because when my cylinder overLap with a Box Collison the game consider that my character overLap.
@@e.Mihaii either check on Google for “collision channels” to add custom channels to specify what can overlap and what will get ignored or even blocked by collisions
Otherwise - use a branch on the Overlap Event, pull out from “other component”, find “not equal”, connect with your Component you wanna ignore and put your code on TRUE - that will check:
IF overlapped component IS NOT Cylinder -> run the code
@@UnrealSolver Thank you , the second method work and now I will try the first one , I think its more optimized
I tried it on UE5 and it's not working, any idea what could be different ?
nvm, it was just not visible on the rock asset
@@tomaszsojka9780 Polecam discorda, znajdziesz w „about” mojego profilu ;]
Tam jestem w stanie szybciej odpowiadać 👌
background song?
There are a few ;]
All of them are available on TH-cam Music Library
Will let you know later which songs I used in this video
Music used in the Video:
- Oh My - Patrick Patrikios
- Press Fuse - French Fuse
- Straight Fuse - French Fuse
- Rich in the 80s - DivKid
- Smokey's Lounge - TrackTribe
- Something You Could Never Own - NEFFEX
- Down With Your Getup - Mini Vandals
Why For each loop is mistake ?? I think For each loop is better than length + substract + for loop.
And you can easily make that with line trace °.° !
Yeah, I answered that once in a comment that it was a poor choice of words, my bad 😅
About the line trace I don’t wanna go deep within comments but wasn’t able to get it to work, can you share any example on blueprintue.com? ;)
I was pretty convinced it is possible, for some reason my reference was triggering the event to destroy the Actor but wasn’t doing the “destroy” Event at all
It works as expected in UE5. The reason why the rock is not highlighted is due to lack of simple collision.
Doesn't work for me
I just used the texture...the rest is hard to follow and is way over complicated for something so simple...just add 2nd static mesh to your BP component list (same mesh as the first)...put the outline material on it...uncheck visible...use a sphere collision on overlap to set it's visibility...end overlap just set it not visible again...K.I.S.S
Doesn't work in UE5. Meshes are colored and lit on the inside, not just the outside as shown here.
The very first word of the Title says “UE4”
@@UnrealSolver yeah, but people are going to use these tutorials in more than just the short span of time after uploading. Meaning newer engine versions, which most other content creators actually plan for as well as update their viewers on. Can see why you're viewership is so small by comparison, they're actually helpful. Good luck though 👍
@@Goggalor1990 for now I don’t use UE5 for various reasons and this is my own choice, maybe one day I will make a video about it
I have a daily job and private life, this is my hobby and my viewership - I am very happy with it and hope to grow bigger but that will take time as I don’t upload stuff so often
@@UnrealSolver thank you! I didn't expect an answer, I just wanted to make sure anyone that was going to try it in UE5 knew it wouldn't work 😅 I've seen people mention that in other videos comments section to save people time and I just thought I'd do it here as I followed the video and found out the hard way haha. It's a nice effect though and maybe I'll get it working in 5 for my current project. trying to mess around with the 1-x node to see if I can place the outline on just the outside. It kind of works on some meshes so maybe if I increase or decrease some values it might work?
@@Goggalor1990 I will take a look and let you know what should be different in the setup 👌
HOW I CREATE CLOUM OR CHART CHANGE BY DATA OUT SOURCE
Mate, chill out, no need for caps lock
What do you mean because I don’t get what do you mean? It would be good to point it out on my discord ;]
@@UnrealSolver How can I create a data column and change its height by changing the value of the data while adding the material as in the exercise here. Or add a c-sharp file that contains data in the form of a chart
@@adam4designss you mean widget based data column that you can rescale by changing the data inside of it? Or you wanna rescale the thing you look at and have some data in a widget so you can control it?
Sorry but I still am not sure what your point is 😅
@@UnrealSolver yes
howi do it
@@adam4designss I asked a double question - A or B and you answer “yes”
Sorry but I cannot help when I cannot understand what your point is
Saying “both is gud” would be telling much more than the “yes” that doesn’t tell anything at all
Yikes, why all the editing? Can you not just narrate what you do in real time? Appreciate the tutorial, but you cut out so much it makes it very difficult if not impossible for a beginner to follow along.
Yeah, when I watch some of my videos later than just after editing I know what you mean. Although possible to follow for newcomers it may be hard.
Still learning as a Video Tutorials Creator, hope to get better over time
Appreciate your feedback and will see what can be done to have even better experience!
You speak and move too fast to be usefull.
Sorry for not being useful
I do my best spending 5-10h to make a video like that instead of meeting my friends or family or enjoying my time in any other way✌️ also provide the Projects ready to download using Google Drive for which I pay in order to have enough capacity for such stuff
And I did it mostly as answer to requests so I additionally had to learn more about it first before doing a video and those guys are happy now, and it seemed to be enough to make possible what the video offers
It may look difficult if you’re very new to the Engine and don’t understand what’s really happening, sometimes it may be that you need some other knowledge in order to be able to follow without overthinking
I try to make not too much splits but instead I speed up parts of the video and explain in the meantime - it’s normal that you may have to pause the video sometimes to follow with the code creation
But thanks for advice, will try my best to make it better 👌
@@UnrealSolver Don't let it get to you, your narration is perfectly understandable.
Plus there's a Pause button and Playback Speed settings in the TH-cam player for anyone who can't keep up.
@@UnrealSolver This guy is wrong. Your speed is fine.
By default, TH-cam lets you lower the speed of a video to .75x, .5x, and even .25x. Try that if someone is speaking too fast
@@xnick99 thank you mate! ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥