Hi all!
I’ve been wondering for a while, and have yet to find an solution to this idea. Is there a way to paint on an object in UE4 (during gameplay), similar to what is seen in UDK’s hitmask system?
##Imagine the possibilities!
If somehow a texture could manipulated at runtime (and with low performance costs), the things that could be done would be awesome! You could use the data for all types of shaders, allowing bullet holes in objects that were see-through, or wounds on characters!
##What about decals?
As far as I know, you can’t cause any changes to the way an object renders materials with decals, just merely render on top, meaning those would be out of the question for this.
##Scene capture components look promising.
Scene capture components already render to a texture object (which can be very handy), so this seems like it might be in the engine somewhere.
##Or…
Can you access a static/skeletal meshes vertex colors in game? Then you could possibly achieve the same results without needing to render another texture (which I think sounds more appealing).
##In conclusion:
Just some thoughts I had, and thought maybe someone would be able to answer my crazy ramblings. I have this sneaking suspicion that this is a thing in some context, due to the shear number of features in unreal + the in editor texture painting. Also the fact this was a thing in UDK seems promising. So if anyone has any idea if this is possible, that’d be awesome if it’s not, that’s cool, and I’d love suggestions on alternative ways to do the mentioned ideas, because they would be insanely cool things to have in a game.
Thanks to everyone in advance,
Jacob