Ictus.
RGB shockwaves.

Quick start

1. Enable Ictus Shockwaves in Edit > Plugins and restart the editor.
2. Open the sample level /Ictus/Maps/Ictus_Showcase (Content Browser > Settings > Show Plugin Content, then Plugins > Ictus Content > Maps). It has 10 numbered booths. Each one shows a preset or a mask, with its settings written on the wall, and fires a wave every 2 seconds.
3. Turn on Realtime in the viewport (Ctrl+R) to see the waves in the editor.
4. In your own level, search Ictus Shockwave in Place Actors, drop it, and drag it onto your character in the Outliner to attach it. The wave now starts from the character's center and only distorts what is behind it.
5. Pick a Preset and click Apply Preset.

Presets

Apply Preset sets the wave, look and light settings. It keeps your trigger, subject and mask.

Triggers

Fire works in every mode, on top of the scheduled waves.

Sequencer and Movie Render Queue

With Follow Sequencer ticked (the default), the waves read the time of your sequence:

• in the editor, they follow the Sequencer playhead;
• in game and in Movie Render Queue, they follow the Level Sequence that is playing;
• Times, Beats and Repeat are then in sequence seconds. There is nothing to key.

To put a wave on a frame:

1. Open your sequence and scrub to the frame.
2. Select the shockwave and click Add Wave At Playhead in the Details panel. The trigger switches to Times and the wave shows up right away while you scrub.
3. Click again on other frames to add more. Clear Waves starts over.

Movie Render Queue gives the same frames as the editor, temporal sub-samples included: a fast ring gets natural motion blur.

For full manual control, tick Use Custom Time and key Custom Time yourself. The bundled script Plugins/Ictus/Content/Python/key_ictus_time.py keys it on every Ictus actor of the level. Without an open or playing sequence, the waves run on the world clock.

Settings

Ictus

• Subject: the wave starts from this actor's center and only distorts what is behind it. Leave it empty to use the actor the shockwave is attached to.
• Center On Subject: untick it to start the wave from the shockwave actor itself. Attach the shockwave to a socket for a hand or a foot.
• Intensity: 0 = off, 1 = as set, 2 = twice as strong. It can be animated.
• Size: scales every size at once. 1 suits a human-size subject framed full body.
• Seed: another wobble shape.

Wave

• Shape: Ring is a camera-facing ring around the center, always round on screen. Sphere is a 3D shell that hugs the set.
• Duration.
• Start Radius and End Radius, in cm at the subject's depth: the ring keeps its size in the world and shrinks with distance.
• Ease (fast start, slow end), Attack, Decay.
• Echoes, Echo Delay and Echo Falloff.

Look

• Strength: how far the image is pushed, in cm.
• Width: ring thickness.
• Tail: 1 = symmetric, 3 = sharp front and long trail.
• RGB Split: 0 = plain refraction, 1 = rainbow.
• Wobble: irregular outline.
• Glow and Glow Color: light on the ring. It looks the same at any exposure.
• Punch: a short chromatic kick over the whole frame when a wave starts.
• Ghost: 1 = the subject's colors smear into the wave, 0 = clean outline.

Mask

• Behind Subject: only what is farther than the subject is distorted. With a Sphere, everything outside the subject's volume is distorted. Depth Offset and Depth Softness set where the wave starts behind it.
• Whole Image: everything is distorted, the subject included.
• Custom Depth: everything except the meshes with Render CustomDepth Pass ticked. This gives an exact cut-out of your hero. It needs Custom Depth-Stencil Pass enabled in Project Settings, which is the default.

Light and advanced

• Flash lights a point light above the subject (Flash Height) with each wave, so the set reacts too. Intensity is in candelas, with its own color and radius.
• Shockwave Material: M_Ictus works before bloom: the glow blooms, and the wave is in linear EXR renders. M_Ictus_AfterTonemap distorts the final image instead.
• Priority: order among your other post-process materials.

Several shockwaves can fire at the same time: each one gets its own pass.

Performance

• Each shockwave is an unbound post-process pass: about 250 shader instructions and up to 7 scene texture reads per pixel.
• The pass is switched off whenever no wave is visible, so idle shockwaves cost nothing.

Compatibility

• Unreal Engine 5.4, 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7, Windows. Runtime module: works in packaged games.
• Screen-space effect: it can only refract what is on screen. Near the frame edges, the image is clamped.
• The Behind Subject mask reads the opaque depth. Translucent objects in front of the cut can be distorted with the background. Use the Custom Depth mask if they must stay sharp.
• Not network replicated: the waves are cosmetic. Call Fire from your own replicated gameplay code.