How to make a reactive, fluid, bubble shield (from Halo)

[naf456]

Hi, Nathan here.
I'm trying to piece together how I would implement a Bubble Shield like the one in halo :

The Bubble shield is good... just... it could be better.
I think it would be cool if the shield would react to being hit.
maybe the hexagons could change color or could be displaced - and maybe if the structure of the bubble could react to wind in the environment? becoming dis-formed like a bubble.

I'm still new to UDK, and still reading through the uscript source code and technical documents, so I still don't know how some systems are implemented.

if each section of the shield reacts to being hit, surely it would have to be modular? IE each of the hexagons needs to be an element of the shield? I wouldn't know how to render a grid of hexagons as a spherical shape.
I also don't like the idea of the shield being able to penetrate the ground - any player underneath the shield a floor below could see it popping out of the ceiling. I wouldn't know how to say tell unreal not to render that part of the shield.

And with concerns to being flexible like a bubble - the physics would probably be to process intensive, especially if bubbles were to collide.

I'm here , looking for some advise, and since some of you do this for a day job, I can't see a better place to ask

Thanks for your time.

Nathan.

[ambershee]

If you used a skeletalmesh, you could use hitmasks:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/HitMask.html

[Spoof]

Hi, Nathan here.
I'm trying to piece together how I would implement a Bubble Shield like the one in halo :

The Bubble shield is good... just... it could be better.
I think it would be cool if the shield would react to being hit.
maybe the hexagons could change color or could be displaced - and maybe if the structure of the bubble could react to wind in the environment? becoming dis-formed like a bubble.

You could use WorldPositionOffset to warp the bubble surface for wind influence.

if each section of the shield reacts to being hit, surely it would have to be modular? IE each of the hexagons needs to be an element of the shield? I wouldn't know how to render a grid of hexagons as a spherical shape.

You don't need a complex set of meshes... just one sphere with a texture map of hexagons (and a few pentagons... look closer at the picture). Try this link for starters, and use Ambershee's suggestion of HitMasks to simulate interaction.

I also don't like the idea of the shield being able to penetrate the ground - any player underneath the shield a floor below could see it popping out of the ceiling. I wouldn't know how to say tell unreal not to render that part of the shield.

With a little creativity and a lot of experimentation you may be able to achieve this in the material. A wild guess would be to use a parameter to blend out the material toward the bottom of the sphere by supplying a float value representing the ground position.

A cruder way to avoid intersecting the ground is to use a truncated mesh.

And with concerns to being flexible like a bubble - the physics would probably be to process intensive, especially if bubbles were to collide.

Quite the opposite. As long as spheres are treated as true mathematical spheres (using the simple line collision option instead of per-poly) then they are arguably the most optimal collision primitive.

[naf456]

WOW, you guys are brill. Thanks , I'll check it out!