[FEATURE REQUEST] Drive Flickering Lights via 2dTexture

Development Rendering
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1

Just like the old days…

I really liked it when a lot of features are exposed directly within an Actor property. It keeps the workflow tidy.
I’d like to have the ability to associate a 256x1 2DTexture to drive flickering, strobing lights via LightActor properties. Including:

  • Texture slot
  • Rate (Floating point value range where 1 is normal speed and 0 is off. Maybe clamp it to 10 or 20 so users can understand the range?)
  • Allow users to modify the Rate or Rate Scale via Blueprint
  • Allow it to be associated with a LightActors’ brightness and toggle state.
  • Allow multiple lights to be associated with the same data and blueprint (instancing) but with independent color and brightness.

Of course we still want Blueprint access, but imbedding properties for a feature like this makes for a more robust Actor that require little, if any, Blueprint work to get it stood up.

I’d also assume we’d be able to pass all the data to Blueprint anyway?

2

Hi David,

Thank you for your request. I have entered a report into our feedback database. If there is anything else that you would like to see featured in Rocket, please let us know.

Thank you,

Alexander

3

Nice ! Thanks, Ryan.

I think that adding more parametric properties and more imbedded features for Actors can save developers a lot of Blueprint and Matinee dev time. In short, they become almost “smart-actors” you know? Use it if you want, so-to-speak.

The rhetorical question is like - “Hey, why don’t we just put this stuff here so folks don’t have to work in this other module to do something?”

So the hookups are in the Actor Properties, but the parameter controls (toggle states, keyframes, and other common light parameters) are exposed in another system like Blueprint or Matinee. Also, some folks might just want these to not even be associated with Blueprint or MatineeData, maybe ?

I do a lot of ambient, atmospheric work. I love having my properties right there in the Details panel for me to work in. It may be the case that one could write a plugin for this as well. I don’t know how to integrate it into the details panel, but I could do this in maxscript, so to speak.

Cheers, man

Dave