Instanced Materials Time Varying

Overview

A Material Instance Time Varying is another type of InstancedMaterial in UE3. Its primary purpose is to put more of the control over how materials change over time into the content team's hands. Usually to have time varying materials you have to have code driving the parameters which we want to avoid.

Using them for making decals fade out instead of popping is a great way to add that extra bit of polish.

Making an MITV

You will want to set up your BaseMaterial with the parameters you want to vary over time. (e.g. if you want something to fade out over time you will want some parameter perhaps called FadeVal that when it is at 0 the material is not faded and at 1 it is completed faded out)

To make an actual MITV you follow the same steps you used to make an MIC. Specifically, right clicking on a material and choosing: "Create New Material Instance Time Varying"

Parts of an MITV and what they do

Once you have an MITV you will have a number of Params that exist which can be filled in to cause the MITV to do vary over time.

bLoop: if true, then the CycleTime is the loop time and time loops

bAutoActivate: This will auto activate this param

CycleTime: this controls time normalization and the loop time

bNormalizeTime: if true, then the CycleTime is used to scale time so all keys are between zero and one

OffsetTime: How much time this will wait before actually firing off. This is useful for keeping the curves being just the data for controlling the param and not a bunch of slack in the beginning (e.g. to wait N seconds then start fading)

bOffsetFromEnd: When using OffsetTime it is nice to be able to offset from the end of the decal's lifetime (e.g. you want to fade out the decal, you want to change the color of the decal before it fades away etc.)

various curve data: This is the data which will be evaluated and then the parameter will be set to the value. So just like other curves in UE3 a value (in this case time) is passed into the curve. The curve evaluates that InVal and sets the parameter to the calculated value.

Examples

Example of an MITV

This MITV has two parameters that fade. A Fade_Out and a Glow.

The Glow a parameter that starts right when this material is placed in the world and from the curve we can see that it takes .4 seconds to go from 1 to 0. This glow starts off bright and then fades down to nothing.

The Fade_Out parameter has bOffsetFromEnd. This means that the curve starts OffsetTime (in this case 3 seconds) from the end. So if this material was spawned from code and had a time limit for how long it would last, this Fade_Out says: 3 seconds from when the end start Fading Out by varying the Fade_Out param from 0 to 1 over 3 seconds.

For Programmers

Using an MITV in script

Using an MITV is very close to the same as using an MIC. The only exception is that you need to set a Duration for how long the MITV will be around so that all of the correct TimeVarying can occur.

Here is an example of an MITV being spawned and then the "SetDuration" call both sets the duration and "starts" the MITV.

      MITV_Decal = new(self) class'MaterialInstanceTimeVarying';
      MITV_Decal.SetParent( Source.DecalMaterial );
      MITV_Decal.SetDuration( DecalLifeSpan );
      SetDecalMaterial(MITV_Decal);