UE5 Simple Metaball shader using Distance Fields

[@tehpeasant]

Nice tutorial, thanks. If you have troubles: 1) Make sure that "Generate Mesh Distance Fields" is checked in the project settings 2) Increase the Bounds Scale in the Mesh settings if you get flickery Materials

[@whyserious803]

very useful, thank you very much!

[@cianfavat9458]

is the bounds scale the positive and negative bounds extension?

[@1d33f1x3]

Nice little technique and does exactly what I was looking for! Thanks.

[@charons.5549]

i did that step by step but the metaballs still dont affect each other.

[@Jean_Mi]

the idea is good but I also failed to solve the problem of parasitic shadows. I also removed the saturate otherwise I lose the quality of the color

[@MasterPiffy]

this is brilliant, thanks!

[@ART_SOL_GAMES]

Thank you! You're cool

[@Azerol]

hey after 18:50 i continue to have glitched balls , any idea why?

[@benveasey7474]

Can this be used with Niagara Particles to make jets of water?

[@MrKosiej]

Technically yes but i don't think you'd want to (not in the fluid simulation sense at least). 1. Niagara support for distance fields is experimental but you can enable it in project settings. 2. Those metaballs are not interacting with eachother if any translucency is introduced to the material (they don't generate distance field anymore, but they can can still interact with it, so it will still work with ground), so it works well for a blob like character, but not really for water (unless you want it opaque). To use it for water jet you'd need to make addition distance field balls which i don't think is too performant. Concluding i think there are better ways for making a water jet like ribbons or actual fluid simulation.

[@olegyarko7665]

@@MrKosiej Hello , it was a very interesting and simple tutorial at the same time. Thank you for that. I would like to know - I have created a Niagara system and for some reason, the metaballs do not intersect with each other. I have turned on distance fields in the project settings as you instructed. Any ideas ?

[@rKaype.]

Think there'd be a way to make the wpo scale more in a certain direction?

[@MrKosiej]

Sure, in the video i use vector 3d (or float3 as it's called in materials) from input data. You can break it (decompose) into 3 floats and modify just one value, then merge it back and pass into wpo.

[@GabrielCasote]

Hi, I followed your tutorial and everything worked out fine! However, there is a gap between the vertices, is there anything that can be done? Thank you very much for your help!

[@gabeg9856]

If your mesh has flat normals (default when you make a new mesh in blender), the planes will separate. The mesh needs to have its faces shaded smooth.

[@MrKosiej]

Skip Intro 2:33

[@juandarioarangovelasquez5855]

Is working for Niagara System ?

[@MrKosiej]

I didn't try it with niagara, but niagara can spawn static meshes, and you can assign materials to them, so my guess is that it should. Try it and let me know :)