Tangent , Beam and Screen Alignment.

Hello,

There is an issue with beams when u use tangents to create something like an arcing lightning effect.

Since beams are a plane u end up with something flat that is partially visible as the plane is looking towards the tangent direction. I wonder since this issue exists since UDK. How come Epic never changed this beam method?

Here is an example of what i’m trying to achive: Hard Reset All Weapons - YouTube

The idea is to have the actual target points after they are created and arced like in the video to attach to a close player if applicable, Obviously I cannot do it due to it looking odd and unnatural.

So please shoot and let me know.

Hey DieByZer0 -

I entered this bug in myself today for our engineers to look at, UE-5049 for reference. I am uncertain if it will be fixed in the near future. The effect you show above, even with the issue in place, should be possible to reproduce with the existing Beam system. You will need to use multiple different emitters in your particle system to get the dome effect from the video.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

Yes but the beams dont rotate towards the camera that is the issue, No matter how i set it up they will always look on 1 angle and never rotate to camera which causes those lightning beams to cut out in certain angles.

I don’t understand what dome effect you are referring too, We are only talking about the lightning beams that are curved on this video.

As an example this is a beam that rotates to camera: Screenshot by Lightshot

This is how it looks with tangents:

Which is wrong. Tell me if there is another way to curve the Beam and I will recreate however right now with tangents the above effect is unacceptable.
Is it possible to force the beam even with tangents to look at the camera while curved? That is the real question.

Hey DieByZer0 -

I agree that it is incorrect and that is why I inputted the bug report yesterday. With single beams with no noise applied there is a limitation that this bug report will address. The dome effect I was referring to was the look of the overall arc-ing effect once the weapon fire hit the ground. Each individual element was a singular arc but the energy created by the effect was a sphere or dome. To that end you can create a system which recreates that general look. Here is a quick project base don first person template in 4.5.1 that should hopefully show you what I am talking about.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

Thank you, Will have a look into it.