Exercise 1 - Contrast - Exploring Visual Methods

For our first exercise, I aim to create a system in UE5 that outputs the union of two or more intersecting shapes.

Presently I'm attempting this using the Custom Depth pass, however, objects included in the pass will occlude each other providing only the total area of the shapes, purely an add function.

Using a translucent material I can display the overlap between a given object and any other meshes. This method, however, gives a projected overlap displaying only along the static objects' surface. At certain angles this is acceptable, but at others, it breaks down as it's not a true union intersection.

Surface Overlap is shown in Blue. Red-hatched areas should also be included in the overlap, but aren't.

Another drawback of this method is it only displays overlap in a radius. The straight line overlaps that a cube should provide, would instead display as a sphere's overlap.