merging materials on a mesh

hello all!

sorry if this should be in the rendering section, but i figured the solutions more likely to be blueprint based than material!

i need to know how to apply multiple materials to the same mesh, and overlap / merge them together. basically i’m trying to create a sort of sonar effect within unreal engine. i’m making progress but i’ve hit a huge snag. at the moment i’m using this material;

http://puu.sh/d7VJr/1954c7bc25.jpg

in this i create a few sphere masks, the centre of which is set via a parameter named ‘source’, which is in turn set using blueprints scripting, and is updated whenever something makes a noise to the origin of that noise. i then use timelines to expand the sphere masks which transitions between parts of the material. this video might be a bit better at explaining;

[sonar material video][2]

which is fine, but my problem lies in when trying to use multiple sounds. every time a sound is triggered, the location of
the sphere masks is updated, and the visible sections instantly change, which kind of ruins the effect. it’s especially problematic because the character can clap to create a visible section. i would like to be able to overlap each successive sonar pulse on top of the last, or something to that effect if possible

of course if there’s a simpler more efficient way that i’m completely missing, that would be great too!

thanks for any help guys, i really appreciate it

Hi ,

This may get more traction on the forums at http://forums.unrealengine.com . We have an active community and someone there may have some insights as to how to implement this!