Beam particle vs SceneCaptureCubeMapComponent :S

[Urre]

So I made these bouncing laser actors for this game I'm working on. They seemed to be working fine until I decided it'd be kickass to add some realtime cubemap reflections to the player character. For some reason, these two aren't working very well together. What seems to be happening, is that the laser beam particle orients itself towards the scene capture on the player, rather than the player camera. Below are two screenshots with the scene capture component off to the right:



As you might be able to notice, the lasers on the lower part of the screen are thinner in the screenshot to the left where the SceneCapture is enabled. It's disabled to the right (which is why the player is green, ignore that) so the lasers are just as thick as before. The laser above is equally thick because i'm far away, but if I fly closer it also disappears.

Here are a couple of screenshots using the model and beam but in UDKs regular gamemode:



When standing on the side where the beam is going to turn towards the SceneCapture which is inside the model, the beam is visible. But when standing up on the ramp on the other side of the beam, it is no longer visible just as expected

However, I noticed that the linkgun works fine no matter where I aim! Now this is a step closer to figuring things out! I did also try using the linkgun beam on the bouncy laser actor but that wielded no different results. I'm suspecting it has something to do with the beam source, but I can't figure out what. The code for the bouncy laser is based on the linkgun code, but there appears to be some magical difference.

Here's the meat of the bouncy laser code.

Anyone had any similar issues, or know what's wrong? Thanks in advance

[Urre]

I also just now noticed the laser doesn't show up all if the emitter hasn't recently been in view. For example, I have a rotating laser which isn't visible if I haven't seen either the laser emitter or the beam the previous frame. What to do? :S

[Urre]

In this here video one can see how the beam is visible at first, and as I move farther to the left, it no longer shows up as one would expect. As I move back to the right it starts showing up again. What can be done about this?

[UnrealEverything]

Hmmm, what you could probably try to do is:

"invert" the beam. That means now you have a start and an end point. Try to use the end, as start, and the start point as end. If that makes sense


What I would have said if you didn't try it with the link gun beam:

Youi could try compare LinkGunBeam with your particle...
Also: I don't exactly recall the name of the setting, but somewhere in your particle there should be some properties (somewhere under the RequiredModule?) Maybe it has something to do with how Sprites are always facing the Camera, maybe they face the ScreenCapture instead?


Or there may be something that allows you to always force an update/render of the particle, much like with Animations/AnimTrees.


Don't know if any of that works/helps, good luck though