Option one - render to image, the use widgets with said images. Option two - render on the go. Option two is better from workflow perspective - just do the mesh, editor works. Option one better from performance prespective, but that does not make any sense, because I still would use same ship in the game with same geometry. So, yea I need to convert meshes to blueprints some how. I actually do not need to make mesh transparent per se, because of how meshes need to be for the game - split in 3 parts:

• Internal, that contains physics and triggers and stuff
• External - top - that one that is hidden when we go inside ship
• External - bottom - actually probably same mesh as top. So we need to make blueprint view out of internal parts only. What is more, for it to be functional, I need labels on top of gameplay related stuff. And I need overlays of different systems?

Modules are just key functional geometry with space around it. There is no need to generate any thing from the mesh - key cell of geometry may very vell be marked as "ENGINE" and that will work. Cells around it autogenerated any way.

But will it look nice? Shure it will look nice with detailed blueprint of the turret! But it kills "visual" design completely. Well, to be honest, split of ship on internal and external parts, thats what kills visual design.

Other option is to design as is - ie live render ship as it is with or without top part. Then we need some kind of overlay/highlight? of important stuff? For example - I need to show that here is the structural support that was optimised out, or more precisely I need to show un optimised part, when I add stuff to the ship.

I really like idea of - what you see is what you get. But how to make those peski preview of optimizations?

So we have 3 types of module

• Normal ship mesh - optimized - what you see is what you get
• "Schematic mesh shader effect"
  • Walls only between different type sections, no external walls
• not connected to ship, both "grabbed" and "dropped" - schematic view, no floors no walls, no doors
• near ship - preview of how it will look when merged - what if it is same render technique as for previous point?

Mesh rendering test: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/is-it-possible-to-create-a-custom-wireframe-shader-material-in-unreal-5-that-only-mostly-renders-quads-and-not-triangles-like-in-this-unity-engine-shader-example/848990/9 Fresnel effect - edge highlight https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/using-fresnel-in-your-unreal-engine-materials Translucent material ?

Now that makes me thing. What exactly do I want? In perfect world I would like some thing that looks like drawing. Well here is the excellent look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umzLSts3sto - dark with glowing outline sketch like look https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ42ylVyDpc - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdaemvf_MvA May be cellshading is the answer? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4ur9c8H6AI

Sketch like look has one another benefit - I want to see full ship blueprint - It is just cool! And maybe I can use it as minimap.

And here is holy grail of wire frame rendering - https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/wireframe-material-part1-the-not-so-manly-way/105122 I can do some basic tutorial for that. But most importantly - I know that I can use meshes. Well, I will need to generate meshes by merging them... but not really. When I render ship, made of cells, I need to update each cell separately. I cell Is the mesh we merge, then there is no point of merging them in editor! So our render mode should work specifically on unmerged meshes - which means, as plan B we can have just special meshes for that mode, if we really want to!

What it is actually trying to do? Using a wireframe texture. We would render out UV layout in our content creation package and use it as a texture in UE4 material.

Using a wieframe texture with dedicated unwrap for wireframe rendering. We would need to create a dedicated UV unwrap, where all faces would be stacked on top of each other in a such way, that they would form a single triangle that occupies exactly half of the zero to one UV coordinate space. We would render UV layout into a texture. But this time, we can use only 1 texture for all out meshes. One particular downside is that it requires some additional work on the meshes and space to store extra UV channel. Luckily, almost all content creation package have an ability to unwrap each face into 0-1 UV range automatically.

Using dedicated unwrap for wireframe rendering and procedural mask. Essentially, this approach is the same as above, but instead of using a texture, we would generate our mask procedurally, eliminating issues caused by texture resolution from previous method

More specifically what U and V coordinates means exactly? Do I understand it correctly? UV is coordinates of the pixel in the texture. On the mesh itself, we store for each vertex UV coordinates as well, so then each pixel in triangle can be mapped to a texture? Seems about right

Wtf is that? UV is stored in the mesh isn't it? -> it requires some additional work on the meshes and space (WHERE?) to store extra UV channel.

Still do not understand a shit. But maybe going through tutorial will help? Step 1: In 3d modelling software create mesh and unwrap texture, where all triangles are mapped to same space in 0-1 coordiantes. Step b: find tutorial for blender on how to unwrap

• Creating UV map in bleder is not difficult
• Using UV map in blender requires "shading" tab and some node programming for each pixel - input from uv -> texture -> color

But what is most important, is why do I need this all? I can go with just translucent material, or basically any different color material. I think this needs to be put aside - creating actual ship is more important