Research Project

 For this research project, I was interesting in creating a moving screen material in unreal for my tamgotchi model!

The goal was to create an LCD type screen that would resemble what would traditionally be on a tamagotchi, but with a little bit of *spice*.

The Goal:

1. Base texture (flipbook animation)

2.Dot Grid Effect as would appear on an LCD screen

3.Have some form a screen flicker

4.Add a subtle vignette to the screen for screen fade

5. Jitter and Scan/"sizzle" lines

1. Flipbook Animation (Optional Static Noise)

• Add Texture Sample (a sprite sheet of glitch frames).

• 

2. Dot Grid / Pixel Pattern

• Add a Dot Grid Texture (tileable).

• Multiply Texture Coordinates by a high value (ex: TextCoord * 100) to tile the pattern.

• Multiply or Lerp this with your Base Color to simulate screen subpixels.

• Optional: Invert grid (1 - Texture) for different styles.
  

3. Flicker Effect (Backlight Variability)

• Add a Time Node → Multiply by speed ( ex: Time * 6.28)

• Pipe into a Sine Node → Output ranges from -1 to 1.

• Use a Lerp node (A= 0.8 B=1.2) → plug Sine result as Alpha.

• Multiply Lerp output with Base Color or Emissive to simulate flickering brightness.
  

 4. Vignette (Darkened Corners)

• Use Screen Position node → get Normalized Viewport UVs.

• Subtract 0.5 from both X and Y → Center it.

• Get Length of resulting vector (distance from center).

• Apply 1- Saturate *2.0 or Smoothstep to shape falloff.

• Multiply with Emissive or Base Color to darken edges.
  

 5. Scan Lines (Horizontal Glitch Bands)

• Use Sine(Time + UV.y * Frequency) for animated lines.

• Or use Frac(UV.y * 100) to get horizontal bands.

• Optional: Combine with Noise Texture for jitter.

• Add or Multiply this with Emissive to create line flickers.
  

 

 7. Combine Everything

• Multiply or Lerp all effects into a final Emissive output:

• ((Base Color x Dot Grid x Flicker x Vignette) + Scan Lines) x Mask -> Plug into Emissive Color

FINAL OUTCOME: