Animating a Material Instance Constant in Kismet
In this recipe we'll go through the steps to create a MaterialInstanceConstant (MIC), and show how a MIC can be used to set up player influence over the qualities within a Material. This was already set up and used in the final recipes from Chapter 4, Got Your Wires Crossed? They were active in the night-to-day transition in the scenes. A MaterialInstanceConstant exposes a parameter to animation such as an RGB color channel, a brightness channel or the strength of an Alpha channel. In practical applications, you could use this as a way to alter Materials on assets; making the tattoos on a magic creature glow for instance, as its powers charge up.
Getting ready
From the provided content, load the scene Packt_09_MIC_Start.UDK.
The scene shows a quite abstract special effect. If you don't want to see this looping in the perspective viewport, press the Real time toggle
(Ctrl + R), which is the joystick icon [ 
].
How to do it...
In the Content Browser...
