Canvas Wireframe color

[Feralidragon]

So, here's a question (hoping someone can answer):
in Canvas the DrawActor method has the option to render as wireframe, is it possible to change the color of the wireframe itself?

I tried to change Canvas.DrawColor and no effect, I went to the editor wireframe colors preferences and change them and no effect, the wireframe keeps always as brown.
So, is the wireframe color value saved somewhere (and which I can tweak from UScript), or is it hardcoded nativelly somewhere or does the color depends on graphic drivers or ...?

I find it quite hard to believe Epic would be as dumb as implementing the wireframe option and not be able to even change its color from the canvas or some other way (since without being able to define the color this feature is quite useless).


EDIT: For what is worth, I have investigated this a bit better and I found that it seems that the wireframe color is really hardcoded nativelly, thus not being possible to modify the color (dumb move Epic, I still wonder why they implemented it in the first place)...

However, if someone finds this statement untrue and knows how to change it from UScript, please post here, in meanwhile, it seems I have to go with plan B.

[Shadow]

It's not possible to modify the color unless you write a drawactor function on your own. The color is simply saved locally within the function. You cannot change it with Unreal Script.

[Feralidragon]

Thanks for confirming this Shadow

Well, I guess I really have to go with plan B afterall....

[Shadow]

How does your plane be look like?

[Feralidragon]

Well, to explain plan B I have to explain plan A.

I am currently doing a weapon called Ionizer, and the first thing you have to do with it is to deploy a station which will launch a rocket up to the sky with a satellite in it (the satellite would be used to fire an ion beam in the end to the place you pointed with the Ionizer). The thing is, I want players to see how the station will be deployed in realtime as they choose a place for it to be, and the way I thought was using a wireframed station with different colors: green you can deploy there, red would couldn't (because of the inclination, or other factors).

Plan B... well, I had 2 plans "B" sort of to speak: one was to use the UVs antialiased lines (since I did/do all my models, I have the source UVs), this give me the advantage to tweak the "wireframe" so I can hide certain unwanted/cluttering "wires" (to look cleaner), OR I can simply apply a single color to the launcher, then making it translucent and giving a low scaleglow level and I still get a good effect and gameplay/usage factor.

From those 2 plans "B", I will go with the second (one color and translucency+low scaleglow), because there's another weapon I will make which you can deploy/spawn all kinds of things (if previouslly configured that is), and so my first plan B is not suitable for it and I like to normalize things between weapons.

[papercoffee]

another Idea ...what about a skin with the wire frame on it. Like a remapped UV-map. you make the model from two sides visible and the texture masked or translucent.

EDIT----------------------------------------------------------------
Oh never mind ... you got already that idea...

Plan B... well, I had 2 plans "B" sort of to speak: one was to use the UVs antialiased lines (since I did/do all my models, I have the source UVs), this give me the advantage to tweak the "wireframe" so I can hide certain unwanted/cluttering "wires" (to look cleaner)

Maybe a mix of your two plan B's... could work pretty well.

[Feralidragon]

Maybe a mix of your two plan B's... could work pretty well.

You know what? That's exactly what I am going to do

[Shadow]

I suggest you may use the MeshEmitter coming with this Month's Beta. It has an option to render the particle mesh as wireframe model, with dynamic color. Exactly what you need, and it's fast. Same for the StaticMeshActor, it's already able to draw as wireframe, but I didn't implement dynamic color, the color is cyan by standard. But your both plans are a good solution either.

[Feralidragon]

Thanks Shadow.

However, at least for this specific pack (this is for Nali Weapons 3) I won't be using anything from your SDK, and reason is that I am aiming for this pack to be fully compatible with nothing more than a fresh installed UT v436, with no Bonus packs dependencies nor other external dependencies (so I am not even using skeletal animation yet, I am still using vertex, it sucks but at least no one will complain about not being able to run the pack from the start), so that anyone can run the pack right out of the box, but that info is very usefull since I may use your SDK though for something bigger I am aiming to do since I started to make mods for the game, where I will need wireframed models for certain "somethings"

Either ways I already did a "wireframed" skin (one green and another red), and I can already launch the rocket (screens coming soon on how it ended up looking).

[Shadow]

I can understand your opinion. Thus I'm even more eager to hear about your "something bigger", I'm really curious! UT currently really lacks some bigger mods, currently developed big mods or Total Conversions are delaying for... partially 5 years now.

[Saya-chan]

Oh my! That's awesome.

[Hook]

Ah, Feralidragon, that is so wise to stay with default UT99 compatibility.
I have seen a lot of players going back to pure UT "vanilla" fun that they "grew up with".

[Saya-chan]

I literally grew up with it.

[EvilGrins]

This is a bit out of my field, but despite what's been said above I do believe it's possible to change the colorization of the wireframe. There's a wireframe skin for the Male Soldier and I've a monsterhunt map where it presents some of the monsters in a wireframe format.