Unreal Engine Tutorial - Complex Bubble Material
Here's a complex bubble material that mimics a particle system behaviour without using a particle system. It's available as a Tier 1 reward on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GhislainGir
Tutorial/breakdown of the material
Quick demo.
Bubbles seen from below.
Bubbles seen from above.
Bubbles seen from sideways.
Bubble material is neatly organized using material functions.
Each bubble is a single quad facing the camera using World Position Offset.
Fake bubble rim light.
Fake reflection map.
Fake lighting based on the directional light in the scene.
Fake lighting on the other side of the bubble, like we see light shine through it.
Fake specular highlight.
UVs are slightly distorted to fake that high-frequency bubble motion. Noise node is set to be in its cheapest configuration and uses only 1 level.
Spherical normal map transformed from view space to world space so we see a 3D sphere despite having a quad facing the camera,