How to Create Masks With the Custom Stencil Buffer | Tips & Tricks | Unreal Engine

[@Sedokun]

8:24 - There is one major issue with this tutorial: LERP Alpha in UE4 is not clamped. This means it can go beyond the range of [0,1]. If you feed an alpha of 2 there, it won't stop at value B, but instead will interpolate further. Which will Oversaturate the colors. Example: A = 0, B = 100, Alpha = 2 -> Output will be 200. To clamp value in [0,1] range use SATURATE node.

[@PsyCoCinematics]

Very nice! Read your comment before finishing the vid, just duplicated a spare box and saw the color change as soon as I upped the stencil depth number. Tweaked it as ya said, boom! Perfect!

[@DavidAllenFarrell]

You were born to do this kind of work. Thank you.

[@alienrenders]

To make this obey depth buffer, add two more scene texture nodes. Select SceneDepth and CustomDepth. On each, add a Mask node (leave R checked, uncheck the rest). Link CustomDepth (mask) to the top of subtract node. Link SceneDepth (mask) to the bottom. Use a Saturate node on the result of subtract. Then feed that into a 1-x node. Then multiply this to what you're using for the alpha of your last LERP node and use the result as your new alpha. Make sure your actor has the checkbox enabled to write to the Custom Depth buffer.

[@bigolbearthejammydodger6527]

you are a bloody life saver mate. absolute legend! I'm an indi dev and you just made our 'with thanks' to section with this. I knew it was the depth buffer causing the problem but honestly was not sure how to fix, you saved me a day or so research.

[@shivandrews1055]

Thank you! this works a charm - though the only thing I've run into after implementing this, is the Skylight object in my scene is no longer affected by my PPV. I have the PPV set to infinite bounds as well... Any ideas?

[@alienrenders]

@@shivandrews1055 Does your skylight use the custom depth buffer? I've seen water assets do this. If so, you can't have two uses for the same buffer. Some water assets let you disable the use of custom buffer. Other than that, not sure why a light would be affected.

[@thepixeldump]

Champ comment!

[@csking9929]

This really helps!! Finally, there is a tutorial with clear explanation about post processing!!

[@stefanguiton]

Super useful! Ive been looking at how to do this for ages, this is quite a simple approach.

[@lpnp9477]

Finally, I've been searching for an answer to this question since literally 2015. THANK YOU!

[@blueneongraphics]

one of the best and to the point tutorials/examples. thank you for the reference content. have had to come back to this video several times

[@bobbyr]

Keep making these shorter and consice tutorials, we don't need the drawn out intros and podcast style tutorials are way too long.

[@HandheldGamingHQ]

this ^

[@suitoha9336]

Totally agree!!!!

[@rickfuzzy]

100%

[@digitaltrash]

we need more video like this

[@jakelofgren2510]

So the full color on certain objects is working... but whenever that object is placed behind something, whatever is in front of it gets full color based on the shape behind it. how do you fix this??

[@Jambax]

To make it more useful, the Custom Stencil really needs to be made available for Opaque materials in the pixel shader. It's already possible with engine modifications, but it's a nasty hack to do so.

[@stormolflak]

Thank you! It took some time to figure some stuff out muself, but this is really helpful!

[@Rolangee]

This is amazing explanation !!!!!

[@NahitoKun]

change your anti-aliasing to FXAA or MSAA in project settings > Rendering to remove jitters.

[@allashama]

God damn! Texturing is a mindblowing brain! You have to be alien to understand it lol.

[@3datonement687]

Great Explanation, Thanks A lot

[@joepolidoro429]

Any thoughts on being able to identify if an actor is currently showing its custom buffer/stencil? I'm looking to trigger events only when an object displays its stencil.

[@나랑드-i3y]

I can understand so easily! thanks to this video

[@haiyimei]

dude, amazing tutorial! thx a lot!

[@ty1978]

How would you go about using this method on decals? My scene is black and white using a desaturate in the PP Mat but I need for the decal (blood etc) to still be red when I shine my flashlight on them. I set up a Decal BP to test but the decal has no custom depth, any ideas? Thank you!

[@evecsb]

Hey thanks! You saved my life!

[@milagro2300]

That´s what I call "TEACHING"! Thanks!

[@DemonsWizards]

6:57 🖤 from DEMONS WIZARDS

[@HyperCazual]

I think I can speak for most of us saying... we've heard enough about "making your own masks". Can we give it a rest already? Oh wait, what?

[@skydrowdev]

Lol I had a hard time getting it 😭😂

[@samohickey]

I am trying to use this technique on my ocean, so that it doesn't have a comic outline like the rest of my game.. I'm soooo close... but having an issue on where to hook it up on my material. Must... Study... More... Materials! :D

[@tacticalteamkilling6539]

Is there a way this can be applied to lights? For example, an IR light/laser

[@giovannisolimeno5040]

This was really useful, thank you

[@nonpurplestar4158]

Greetings_!! Thank you for the helpful tutorial_!! I have sprites instead of regular objects on my stage. These sprites are markers that I can colorize. The problem is that the color of the material is not accurate due to the lighting in the scene. In the editor, I can turn off the light by applying the unlit mode, but after building the project, this mode is not available! I know that this effect can be repeated by inserting into (post-process material) your post-process material with a diffuse map. After this action, my sprites on the stage become transparent, how can I avoid this or am I doing something wrong_?! Thank you in advance_!!

[@KostasOreopoulos]

What a great tutorial

[@samgielen]

How could I render that mask as an alpha channel instead of a color? I want to use this technique to create an occlusion object in Virtual Production, which is running realtime, so Luma Matte usage isn't possible, I really need the mask to render as an alpha channel. How would I go about creating that?

[@nitrork]

Thanks for the tutorial, this is approaching pretty close what I need to accomplish, but I'm wondering if there is a way to create stencil passes PER track/element- or individual meshes of an object? I'm working with alembic geometry caches of character animation and would like to be able to isolate certain parts of a render (like the eyes for example) independent from the rest of the object. Is there a way to do this without having to import every single character element separately? Ideally it would be great if you could assign custom stencils according shader Id's.

[@dysnXO]

anyone know if its possible to enable and use Custom Stencil pass on Decals? it works with meshes but it seems not to work with decals

[@oxygen9828]

no way there's anything you don't know about unreal. Really like your works, I am often motivated to keep going by them. GL!

[@Armetron]

Lets say I want to render an object that is behind a wall infront of a wall as if the wall wasn't there, how could I do that?

[@android0552]

how to hide actors with post process and custom stencil?

[@RealDaveTheFreak]

Awesome feature for the most part. But it doesn't seem to work with sprites. :(

[@rendermanpro]

Make "add AOV channel", or custom buffer, and it will simplify everything.... instead of that duct taping style. *Make simple things simple.*

[@liepins444]

This would make it a universal change to the object, where the current implementation is selective use. In this example, it's to a specific post process material. Keeping things modular enables more use case scenarios at the cost of ease of use. Epic is pretty good about not over simplifying features that would put them in a small box. Edit:spelling

[@liepins444]

That said, tools to create "render layers" would be fantastic! These overrides would be specific to rendering and would not be expected to function properly in realtime.

[@kinggore5229]

Good stuff.

[@mediaguy9557]

Thanks, but my head hurts trying to comprehend the later part of the videos...

[@goldennboy1989]

How do I prevent the mask from being visible even if the masked object is occluded by something else?

[@joelwynd9233]

did you find a solution ?

[@Urammar]

@@joelwynd9233 Did you? Lmao

[@joelwynd9233]

@@Urammar you need to assign a stencil mask to everything else in the scene as well. Object being masked = stencil 001. Everything else in the scene = stencil 002 . This worked for me

[@Urammar]

@@joelwynd9233 thank you, but I've actually found a more robust solution! Compare the stencil with a custom depth/scene depth comparison. It's probably not as performant though, but it catches all the edge cases

[@CYPHERNATURE]

Is there a way to do it inverted, where the post processing only affects the object, and not the reset of the environment?

[@fattumhawk]

what do you mean? just affect the result of the stencil buffer to modify the affected range, you are supposed to do it in material

[@Kaboom1212Gaming]

This is an old comment, but the way you can isolate your object is by putting a 1- node before the multiply in the shader, it'll invert the mask in there. If that's what you mean.

[@yang_daxia]

Why the objects have no jitter? I've been working this for two weeks...

[@yang_daxia]

Could I get the resource in this case?

[@edwinluthfisaputra107]

Try changing the processing in your post process mat setting to be before/after tonemap

[@johnvpaite]

Whats the difference between this and using the default channel system when we are rendering out custom passes? Does this take into account the depth of field?

[@Mw_kwak]

Hmm, this doesn't seem to be working on Blueprint object. Well not in UE5. Haven't tried older versions

[@dissonantprotean5495]

this works fine for objects inside blueprints in UE5. Are you trying to put the post process volume in a blueprint? Because you can't do that.

[@offbeatlegend2171]

wow

[@joshryan2382]

Can you do a live stream or a video explaining ai with Fortnite henchman or bots

[@logandoejogando...7532]

WHAT 100% OFF MEANS IN THE UNREAL ENGINE STORE

[@user-yo4jd6bt1y]

Pes2022

[@GabrielePardi]

Great tutorial: to the point! Thanks