For this project, I developed an interactive scene where the player walksthrough a toad-filled swamp at night. The focus was to create a realistic environment with an eyeshine effect (also known as "tapetum lucidum") whenever light from the player's flashlight hit a toad's eyes.
Software: Blender, ZBrush, Substance Painter, & Unreal Engine 5
Flashlight Blueprint
Whenever the player presses the "F" key, the flashlight makes a click sound and then the light turns on. The first time the flashlight is turned on, it turns off the widget explaining the controls.
Eyeshine Blueprint
Above is the blueprint for the eyeshine within the third person character blueprint. On event tick, the position of the flashlight follows the player position and then checks if the flashlight is on. If it is on, it uses line trace to check what object is being hit. If the object is a toad, it will cast to the blueprint containing the toad ("BP_ChangeMat_TF" to right) to turn on the eyeshine of that specific toad. If it is not a toad, the eyeshine is turned off. As long as the toad being hit is the same one, it will not attempt to turn eyeshine on or off.
Preproduction
To the left is an overhead map of the level layout. Obstacles like trees, rocks, and water, will force the player to take a curved path through the swamp, and more toads will appear the closer to the end they e
To the right and below are inspiration and reference images for the scene.
