Flipbook Textures

Document Summary: An overview of flipbook textures in the Unreal Engine.

Document Changelog: Created; maintained over time.

Introduction

The flipbook is intended as a way to get the same functionality as particle SubUV animations on objects like StaticMeshes and SkeletalMeshes without using a TextureMovie.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Flipbook textures suffer the same problem as movie textures in that the same source flipbook texture will be in sync when used on multiple objects in a scene. There is a TTP to remedy this issue for flipbooks.

Working with Flipbook Textures

Here are the steps to using a flipbook texture:

Import

In the check dialog, check the 'Flipbook' option. When you view the texture in the GenericBrowser, it will display the standard texture size and format, followed by the dimensions of the flipbook. For example, when first importing a 256x256 texture as a flipbook, it would display "256x256[DXT1] 1x1".

For more information on importing textures, see the Importing Texture Tutorial.

Properties

Open the properties window of your new texture, and set the following fields as desired:

• HorizontalImages - the number of columns of 'sub-images'
• VerticalImages - the number of rows of 'sub-images'
• FBMethod - the method to iterate through the sub-images
  • TFBM_UL_ROW Start upper-left, go across to the the right, go to the next row down left-most and repeat.
  • TFBM_UL_COL Start upper-left, go down to the bottom, pop to the top of the next column to the right and repeat.
  • TFBM_UR_ROW Start upper-right, go across to the the left, go to the next row down right-most and repeat.
  • TFBM_UR_COL Start upper-right, go down to the bottom, pop to the top of the next column to the left and repeat.
  • TFBM_LL_ROW Start lower-left, go across to the the right, go to the next row up left-most and repeat.
  • TFBM_LL_COL Start lower-left, go up to the top, pop to the bottom of the next column to the right and repeat.
  • TFBM_LR_ROW Start lower-right, go across to the the left, go to the next row up left-most and repeat.
  • TFBM_LR_COL Start lower-right, go up to the top, pop to the bottom of the next column to the left and repeat.
  • TFBM_RANDOM Randomly select the next image
• FrameRate - the rate at which to flip through the images (e.g. 4 would mean 4 images per second)

Material

Create a new material and drop in a FlipbookSample expression and set the texture to your flipbook texture.