Unreal Engine 5 : Materials For Beginners Guide

How to build materials and shaders using the unreal engine 5 material editor.

What you'll learn

High level understanding of the different workflow for creating materials inside of Unreal Engine 5

Learn how to optimize and create efficient materials and shaders inside of Unreal Engine 5.

Integrate your unreal engine materials into blueprints for more dynamic material control.

Confidence that you will be able to create your own materials for your own needs after the course

Requirements

No prior knowledge of materials will be needed. Knowledge on how to install and setup Unreal Engine 5 before you start the course will be needed.

Description

Learning the material editor in Unreal Engine 5 can feel overwhelming. With numerous techniques and methods available to achieve your desired visuals, starting can seem nearly impossible. In this course, we delve into the basics of the Unreal Engine 5 Material Editor, providing you with a strong foundation to unleash your creative potential for your project or game. No longer will you be confused when striving for specific outcomes or be confused with material editor options. You will gain the confidence on how to attain a specific look or effect. This course is taught by a Senior Technical Artist with over 12 years of experience in the video game industry, you can be confident that the methods taught in this course are demonstrated in a manner expected by a professional game studio for approaching material creation. The course begins by covering the fundamentals necessary to start building your own materials. It also addresses how to construct optimized materials that are performance-oriented, and how to structure your materials for easy updates and sharing. Furthermore, the course addresses creating materials that interact with the blueprint system, enabling you to have materials that react dynamically. By the end of the course, you'll possess the confidence to craft materials for your projects and games that truly shine. Let's get started!

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction

Lecture 2 Installing Project Files

Lecture 3 How to use Project Files

Section 2: Material Editing Fundementals

Lecture 4 Installing Unreal Engine

Lecture 5 Creating your first material

Lecture 6 Material Editor UI Overview

Lecture 7 Material Editor Nodes and Naviagation Basics

Lecture 8 Applying Materials to Meshes

Section 3: Core Nodes and Concepts

Lecture 9 What do the color of Nodes mean ?

Lecture 10 RGB is XYZ

Lecture 11 Texture Sample Node

Lecture 12 Texture Coordinate Node

Lecture 13 Vectors and Constants Node

Lecture 14 Core Math Nodes

Lecture 15 Clamp and Saturate Nodes

Lecture 16 Append Node

Lecture 17 Component Mask Node

Lecture 18 The LERP Node

Lecture 19 The Fresnel Node

Lecture 20 The Transform Node

Lecture 21 The Panner Node

Lecture 22 The Time Node

Lecture 23 Vertex Painting Basics

Section 4: Material Detail Panel Overview

Lecture 24 Detail Panel High Level Overview

Lecture 25 Material Domains

Lecture 26 Shading Models

Lecture 27 Blend Modes

Lecture 28 Two Sided Materials

Lecture 29 Material Attributes

Section 5: Material Domain Examples

Lecture 30 Decal Materials

Lecture 31 Light Function Materials

Lecture 32 Volume Materials

Lecture 33 Post Process Materials

Lecture 34 User Interface Materials

Section 6: Special Case Materials

Lecture 35 UV Tiling Basic Example

Lecture 36 World Space Tiling

Lecture 37 Basic Emissive Material Setup

Lecture 38 Masked Emissive Material Setup

Section 7: Blend Modes

Lecture 39 Opaque Blend Mode

Lecture 40 Translucent Blend Mode

Lecture 41 How to use refraction in Translucent Blend Mode

Lecture 42 Masked / Cutout Blend Mode

Lecture 43 Additive Blend Mode

Lecture 44 Modulate Blend Mode

Lecture 45 Alpha Composite Blend Mode

Lecture 46 Alpha Holdout Blend Mode

Section 8: Material Organization

Lecture 47 Material Parameters

Lecture 48 Sorting Material Parameters

Lecture 49 Material Instances

Lecture 50 Material Functions

Lecture 51 Material Parameter Collections

Lecture 52 Adding Comments and Node Comments

Lecture 53 Reroute Pins and Named Reroute Nodes

Section 9: Master Material Scene Organization Setup

Lecture 54 Master Material Overview

Lecture 55 Base Color Controls

Lecture 56 Setting up ORM options

Lecture 57 Emissive Color Controls

Lecture 58 Normal Maps Options

Section 10: Summary

Lecture 59 Course summary and congratulations!

Beginners to Unreal Engine 5 and its Material Editor.