SCAN
_SHOWCASE
Scan is a sci-fi scanning effect inspired by the scanning visuals in Detroit: Become Human. Once activated, it constructs a coordinate system in the world, applies stylized shading to the environment, and detects selected actors for highlight rendering. This project explores the balance between technical functionality and futuristic visual design in a real-time interactive effect.
Through this study, I significantly strengthened my understanding of post-process materials, absolute world position, and blueprint-driven VFX workflows.
"Of course I'm a machine Lieutenant. What did you think I was?"
_BLUEPRINT
The blueprint side of the scan effect is built as a reusable actor component attached to the Player Controller, so the system stays independent from any specific pawn and remains easy to access and manage. It listens for the scan input, calls Start Scan and End Scan, and drives a simple state machine with fade-in, faded-in, fade-out, and faded-out states to control the timing of the effect.
During the active phases, the component updates a normalized scan time, remaps it through a curve for a snappier transition, and uses that value to drive the post-process blend. It also spawns and manages a dedicated scan post-process actor when needed, and caches references for efficiency.
In addition, it continuously sends key data such as normalized time, scan state flags, range, grid cell size, and the controlled pawn’s world location into a Material Parameter Collection, allowing the material layer to stay fully data-driven while the blueprint handles input, state control, timing, and system orchestration.
_SHADER
The post-process material is built as a modular, world-space scan system driven by blueprint parameters, with the effect expanding from the pawn’s location and progressively revealing the scene through a series of layered visual passes.
The core motion is created with radial masks, voxelized world-position calculations, timing curves, and procedural grid-based patterns, which give the scan its structured digital feel. On top of that, secondary layers such as screen distortion, randomized cell reveals, outlines, Fresnel highlights, pulsing rings, and projected texture effects are combined to make the scan feel more dynamic, responsive, and visually rich.
Each part is developed as a small reusable function, which helps keep the material organized, easier to iterate on, and efficient enough to support a complex final look without becoming unmanageable.
_PARTICLE_SYSTEM
The final layer of the effect adds a Niagara-based 3D grid that follows the pawn and extends the scan into actual volumetric space rather than relying only on post-process imagery.
The system spawns particles in a local-space grid, drives their behavior with the same shared scan parameters, and scales or reveals them based on their normalized distance from the scan center, allowing the grid to animate in sync with the expanding effect. Separate emitters are used for intersection points and axis-aligned grid lines.
Custom materials handle visibility, occlusion, pulse boosts, and scan-edge highlights so the particles remain readable both in front of and behind geometry. This extra Niagara layer helps the scan feel more spatial and tactile by giving the effect a physical 3D structure that complements the post-process pass.
