I know that you can make an actor look at you, but I would like to have a character BP inherit a billboard flipbook. The reason why I want this is because I wanted to make a game sort of like Doom and Shadow Warrior. The 2.5D method of art. I have been looking around for any news for an update that would support this idea, but so far nothing. I am hoping the people at epic or the unreal devs would see this post and take my request into consideration.
The other thing I would like to request is adding some sort of flipbook within UMG, so I can have sprite animations of the character perspective of fists punching and gun shooting. If there is another way to do this, then please tell me.
Thank you for your time.
-c0mbatcat
You will find you can create you own custom material that uses the Flipbook node. The node takes in a texture object and allows inputs for Rows, Columns, UV, Time, etc…
The resources below should get you to a good starting point.
Flipbook Material Creation
Flipbook Tutorial
After you have this portion of the material you can add the camera facing function. Check out the Math Hall Content Example level. There is are 2 styles of camera facing math examples show near the very end. Both of those techniques to do speedtree style camera facing sprites. You can also transform the normal map properly so the sprites light correctly as they rotate.
After you have created the material, you can simply add this to your Widget Blueprint as an Image.Let me know if this was helpful or if you have further questions.
If you would like you can submit an official GitHub pull request. We have instructions on the Epic Wiki that will help you get set up to the point of submitting a pull request. Thanks for taking the time to create your own code fix and sharing!
Oh, to be submitted to the engine it needs to be properly rewritten. It needs to extend UWidget instead of UImage and be able to work with flipbooks. It might take me a bit to implement it in that way, but I’ll definitely will do my best. It would love to contribute to UE4.
Thank you! I didn’t even know that a flip book node existed.