Unreal Engine Basic Integration - setting material

Unreal Engine
1

Hey @smudgy67,

The original question by smudgy:

In relation to the ‘basicLightactIntegration’ and UE4, when I open up this map in UE4 and run the LA project, BasicLightactIntegration313, I find that: the cube is rotating that is determined by LA, this is fine, the texture set by LA is fine, the material set by LA is not showing on the middle display in UE4.

Please, could you tell me why this should be?

Hmm, that’s weird. One thought is that the shaders might not be compiled yet, but I can’t be certain at this point.

Here’s what I see when I run the UE project.

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What do you see?

Thanks,
Mitja

2

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The middle screen is blank.

3

Hey Smudgy,

Using Texture setting instead of Material is a better and more versatile way anyway, but may I ask which UE and which versions of our plugins you are using?

If you open Level blueprint, the nodes that set the material are here:

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And if you insert a breakpoint on the Set Material node, can you let me know what’s the output of the Mat pin on the Spout Receiver node?

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Thanks!
Mitja

4

Hey M,

I am using UE4 4.21 and LA 3.13.

UE4 Plugins are LA 2.2 and Spout 1.2.

It states ‘None’ for both texture and material.

ATB (All the best),

S

5

So ok, reloaded the LAandUE4 project, and it worked ok straight away.
Where the bug appears is when you rebuild the lighting on the map itself.

I rebuilt the lighting for all 4 projects, though it was only that one that didn’t work properly thereafter.

Hope this helps?!

6

It states ‘None’ probably because you stopped it at first frame. You need to leave it running for a second or two and only then insert a breakpoint.

Also, if you zoom into the plane you’ll probably see it’s not just grey, but that it has a standard UE4 grid, which tells you the material is not yet built.
image

This means you need to force UE4 to build the Spout Material. As it is created inside Spout plugin the procedure is explained in the following video.

In short, the procedure is as follows:

  1. Play the project
  2. Select the SpoutDisplayPlane plane static mesh
  3. Open the material instance that’s shown in its Element 0 material property
  4. Open SpoutMaterial parent material
  5. Apply it to one of the static meshes in the scene - for example, SpoutDisplayPlane.
  6. Make sure it shows correctly. If it doesn’t, you probably have to change something in the material, for example, add a new node or move one of the nodes a bit, and hit Apply and then Save. This will force UE4 to recompile the material.
  7. If you press play now, the material on SpoutDisplayPlane plane static mesh should be set correctly.
  8. After that, you can set the material of the static mesh to which you’ve applied SpoutMaterial back to what’s been set before.

But anyway, using SpoutMaterial directly, shouldn’t be considered as the best route as it doesn’t allow you any additional options. Any advanced visualizations are using the Texture approach.

7

Hey M,

Very nice explanation, thank you.
Rebuilt the lighting to Production level and followed your instructions, worked a treat =].

Nice one!

ATB…S

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