The Time Node | 5-Minute Materials [UE4]

[@kuunami]

You have no idea how excited I am to have found your channel. You explain things in a way my brain learns best.

[@abcqer555]

Really great explanation. Very clear and very easy to follow and listen to. You got yourself another subscriber good sir!

[@PrismaticaDev]

Cheers Paul :) Glad to have you with us!

[@manonthedollar]

Subscribing for these five-minute materials!

[@raisgamesnz325]

Great tutorial!

[@Fokkusu]

oh my I didnt know how cool the time node is :D, ty ♥

[@PrismaticaDev]

I didn't know how cool YOU are ;) All good! More than welcome :)

[@VickySharma-hd9if]

i loved you explanation brother. amazing stuff

[@basedbukkakeman7892]

do the needful and take a shower, sir. love from pakistan

[@xabunoxx2850]

Oh wow, I’m going to use this to make my fires glow flicker!

[@PrismaticaDev]

Perfect! You could even overlay Sines of different periods for a bit more randomness

[@PrimordialStrange]

SOoo Nicely Explained :)

[@MarageDev]

Hey, this video is awesome, greatly explained, now I'm gonna use the Time Node !

[@PrismaticaDev]

Awesome to hear :) Glad you found it entertaining and educational

[@guilhermenaco]

Thanks man!

[@Leniv_i_Bezdaren]

hello, is time node performance heavy and is it in any way simmilar to blueprint tick?

[@PrismaticaDev]

Shaders are calculated and run every frame regardless - Time is just the Time in seconds since the start of the session which is a globally accessible variable. So no, the Time node is just a variable and doesn't actually process anything :)

[@Leniv_i_Bezdaren]

@@PrismaticaDev Thank you very much for your answer !

[@macxike]

Nice tutorial as always. So is each time node consider a tick? If a material has 3 time nodes, does that mean it also has 3 tick timers? If so, is that considered to be an expensive node?

[@PrismaticaDev]

Shaders are always run "on tick" in a sense - the rendering process for every shader happens every single frame. The Time node is more like accessing a global variable than actually executing anything.

[@PrismaticaDev]

Also, when you have multiple nodes doing the exact same thing the shader compiler will simplify that in to 1 local variable so that instruction only gets processed once

[@macxike]

@@PrismaticaDev Thank you for following up. That's really insightful to know.

[@passtarplus]

I have a question. I am running into an issue where if I change the scalar parameter that is being multiplied by time in blueprint during runtime, then time seems to go exponentially faster. This happens even if I reduce the multiplier back to say 1 or 0. This is making it really difficult to use the time node without preset values. Do you have any tips on that?

[@PrismaticaDev]

Great question! The reason that happens is because time is just the session time - the longer the session is active, the higher the value. So if you’re 1 second in to a session and multiply by 2, the difference is 1. However if it’s 1000 seconds in to the session and you multiply by 2, the difference is 1000. To combat this, you’ll likely want to manually increment a number in a blueprint somewhere. So adding some number to a variable on tick, and then to change the speed you’ll change the number that is being added. If you’re working with a panning texture, you’d add a direction (2vector) instead of a float.

[@passtarplus]

@@PrismaticaDev Thanks so much for your explanation! That makes perfect sense! I did end up creating "Fake Time" via a Timer component that controls the speed. I have a follow-up question. Why does it work if I have a unaltered multiplier placed in the time node? Wouldn't that cause the same issue? From my experience, if I leave an unaltered multiplier, time does go faster, but it doesn't exponentially scale up. Is the idea that it is doing the same thing, but visually it isn't being perceived that way since the increments are all uniform?

[@PrismaticaDev]

Yep, the increments are all uniform so the effect moves at a constant rate. If you alter the multiplier it will also be constant, the only problem is when you -gradually- alter the multiplier@@passtarplus

[@passtarplus]

@@PrismaticaDev Thanks so much for the answer!!!

[@eldany_uy]

Hey! thanks for your material tuts!! I have a question about time node. is it possible to reset it on runtime? how do I control the material to make time start running or start from 0 on some event?

[@eldany_uy]

wait..will reply myself lol....in that case I will just avoid time node, then use a float parameter and control the time value of that float just in blueprints :)

[@PrismaticaDev]

You could also send the “start time” as a one-off blueprint setting and then subtract that from the Time node to get a timer inside the material without needing to set a parameter on tick :)

[@eldany_uy]

@@PrismaticaDev may you make some easy example of that? :)

[@WorrilessChris]

noob question, why did you use the R channel when you added to time? Is there a difference between using the R, G, or B channels in this instance? Or are they all the same because its black and white?

[@RohanCreation5]

Hi, I have a Question i have Used a radial gradient with time multiplied with time - Oneminuse to Fade in and Out my radial but the problem is i want to control the speed of time so how can i do that 😅

[@RmaNYouTube]

by adding textures, you basically made a time machine in 2D UV Space 😁😎

[@paniot8414]

Perfect to use as a lighthouse beam. Or whatever with lights flashing. So, can it be used as alternative way to rotate an object, instead of rotator or I am wrong? Thanks for your lessons. I've just started learning UE, and this is so freaking fascinating lol. Can't tear my ass off my pc.

[@PrismaticaDev]

You could definitely use it to rotate an object entirely in the shader, or even just a very bright emissive texture! UE4 is such a big engine, there's so much to explore haha. If you need a hand with anything don't forget to join our Discord :)

[@paniot8414]

@@PrismaticaDev thanks! I've already joined ;) Definitely I'll need a lot of hints. I'm going towards of creating a 3rd person mmo survival, with endless world

[@PrismaticaDev]

@@paniot8414 Unreal Engine 5 apparently will have some awesome features for huge worlds, so I'm sure it's definitely going to be doable!

[@paniot8414]

@@PrismaticaDev what I really do regret now is that I haven't started learning UE years ago. But I could and should have better done that long time ago. Anyways, never is too late lol

[@PrismaticaDev]

@@paniot8414 it's never too late to start learning :) Game design is something you can apply all of your previous skills to as well

[@wortnes]

Cool!

[@PrismaticaDev]

You're cool xoxo

[@Elmarath]

You have great textures for testing would you be so kind to share?

[@secondhandsightsound3823]

Yeeeet

[@a.l.murkar6425]