Surface Trails

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October 2021***

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Video: https://youtu.be/q66uIcjD8gI

Tutorial: https://youtu.be/hHZwvYIkuwg

Surface trails system allows you to capture trails from
characters or any other objects on a surface by attaching spherical
components to them. As main usage example there is snow landscape
demo with walking character and physics objects leaving deformation
trails after them. 100% Blueprints.

Features:?

• Trails are captured and stored in some area (configurable)
  around player’s camera, so this system is independent from map
  size.
• Attenuation of old trails can be configured (can be set to zero
  so the trails stay forever inside defined area around camera).
• Trail shape is defined by spherical components with
  configurable hardness. So for definition of a box, for example, you
  need to attach several components to it (components count depends
  on required accuracity, in example scene there are 8 components per
  box and 2 components per character foot).
• Actors are marked as trails receivers by applying special Tag
  to them.
• System can be used for big variety of cases (trails on water,
  grass crumpling, any other surface VFX) by draging one material
  function into material.
• Snow landscape example includes photogrammetry based dirt
  material appearing under the snow.