How to create a simple mirror material for use with PlanarReflection?

I’m currently trying to create a mirror in my scene - I found out that there’s such a thing as PlanarReflection but it seems it’s not designated to be used as is in the scene cause it needs a mesh with a reflective material behind it to start being visible in the game view.

So my question is - how do I go about creating such a simple material which will basically allow me to create a mirror? I’m a noob with materials so I don’t really know which way to start from and from what I see, there is no such material ready in the standard content so I guess I’ll have to create one. I bet it’s very easy but I just don’t know how :frowning:

I think you just have a white texture, then make a material from that, and in the material blueprint give it 0 roughness and 1 shininess or whatever it’s called.

That’s absolutely right, solved! Thanks a lot, if you wish to have your comment marked as the solution please add it as an answer instead of a comment and I’ll be happy to accept it :slight_smile:

I accidentally converted it twice, but I can only see one of them.

Yep, I also see just one - accepted, thanks again :wink:

For anyone wondering by ‘shininess’ he means Metallic! Give this a value of 1

Just wondering, is there a way to make this material not have the shaded area on the bottom of it? By that I mean when placing it on any object, is it possible to only see a reflection? Instead when approaching it there is a massive black area that follows the players’ camera.

i do have the same question

like BLAZE_43069 already asked: “Just wondering, is there a way to make this material not have the shaded area on the bottom of it? By that I mean when placing it on any object, is it possible to only see a reflection? Instead when approaching it there is a massive black area that follows the players’ camera.”

Found a way!
so if you already have your mirror, then → search classes → planar refections → drag into level → set infront of the current mirror → change settings into:

  • Normal Disortion Strength: 0
  • Prefiltered Roughness: 0
  • Distance from Plane Fadeout Start: 1
  • Distance from Plane Fadeout End: 1
  • Angle from Plane Fade Start: 1
  • Angle from Plane Fade End: 1
  • Show Preview Plane: True
  • (Show Advanced)
  • Prefiltered Roughness Distance: 0
  • Screen Percentage: 100
  • Extra FOV: 1
  • Render Scene Two Sided: True
  • LODDistance Factor: 1
  • have fun. but watch your GPU usage and render Time, depending on your settings and your environment.

oh totaly forgot! in order to make this happen, you need to go into “project settings” → Engine → Rendering → Lighting → Support global clip plane for planar reflection → set to TRUE.

be aware that this should be done after opening a project, for it will compile all shaders again.
this will take a long time in big projects!

Also if you’re having issues, make sure you check the shader. it needs to have Planar Reflections checked, or it won’t get them.