Heat Distortion Effect/ Landscape

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Hi, I'm looking to have a heat distortion effect far off in the landscape distance. I'm using the PPC chain and have no idea how I can have the effect the same distance away from player/camera at all times and not right at the camera.

[zen-tex]

is this effect on a landscape or static mesh

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I want the appearance of heat dissipation(distortion) coming off the landscape. I don't want to see the effect all over the whole screen and map area. I have it in my PPC chain right now and it does not look very nice that way. I would like to see this effect far off in the distance and not on close up objects and terrain.

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Well here is the effect so far anyways(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcPcFcMWpho). I just attached the dome and material effect for now to the player after converting the static mesh. It has some slight issues and would definitely be better with some enhanchments with scripting. but looks ok for now.

[poeben]

Take a look at http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/PostP...Materials.html. It explains how to do distortion effects using SceneDepth material nodes for use in PPCs.

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Found the problem with edge lighting on the sphere way! It was in my material because I was still using the scene node. Anyways so far the sphere is giving me better results following the player around using the distortion node from the UDN pages. I'm sure this can be improved on greatly. I'm not very good with created materials. Also if using the scene node route with PPC does anyone know of a way to get rid of those annoying screen changes? eg. bright skies once the effect is in the PPC chain. Heat_Distortion.jpg

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Well after some more trial and error, PPC is the way to go. Any idea how I can deal with the bright colour change in the enviroment after adding the PPC chain? I have had this happen before! Is there some sort of filtre node network for this??

[ApolokiA]

You could apply a general "grey" to the material with a multiply.

You could use the scenedepth, square root to make it less apparently, and multiply that over your material in the PPC.

With the material, you can think about it more mathematically, as individual pixels with addition, multiplication etc. perhaps in the diffuse, grab SceneTexture, and multiply with one of the above?

[poeben]

Is your material set to BLEND_Translucent? If it's set to BLEND_Additive it could have that effect.
Does your PPC have an UberEffect in it? Maybe check those settings?

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Appreciate the help. Yes it was on "Blend Additive" (I thought it was suppose to be done this way :/). "Blend Translucent" does the trick. The heat waves and map lighting look fine now, it just needs some minor tweaks.