The Complete Introduction to Materials in Unreal

Name: The Complete Introduction to Materials in Unreal
Rating: 3.9 (24 reviews)

A thorough introductory walkthrough of materials and shaders in UDK, ranging from very basics to advanced!

Created by3dmotive LLC

Last updated 4/2017

English

English [Auto],

What you'll learn

Learn the complete ins and outs of the UDK Material Editor
Learn basic material creation, all the way through to advanced
Learn to create basic-to-advanced materials and shaders in UDK

Course content

3 sections • 33 lectures • 5h 50m total length

Introduction0:27
Source files for Section 1
Importing Textures2:25
Create a new package, bulk import textures, adjust compression for color maps and normal maps (tc_normal_map), and organize them under 3D motive chapter 1 textures.
Material Editor Basics5:38
Applying a Material to a Static Mesh3:24
Creating a Metal Material12:09
Create a metal material in Unreal using a grayscale texture mask, adjust specular power, apply cube map reflection with a reflection vector, and multiply by the mask for emissive control.
Creating a Glass Shader10:04
Create a glass shader in Unreal by wiring the diffuse texture, specular mask, and cube map, then control translucency and opacity with a flipped mask and a power node.
Binding 2 Textures Together8:22
Bind moss to a rock material using linear interpolation and mix maps, texture coordinates, and independent tiling for moss and rock normals, diffuse, and specular.
Creating a Holographic Shader17:50
Creating a Water Shader22:30
Create a water shader in Unreal with translucency, depth biased alpha, and water color. Animate ripples with panners and rotators, blend two normal maps, and add distortion and fog.

Introduction1:55
Source files for Section 2
Material Instancing16:07
Learn how material instancing in Unreal lets you create reusable materials and adjust specular power, cube map, and texture samples with scalar and vector parameters.
Material Instancing 212:46
Create a master material that blends a detail normal map with the base normal, control tiling and intensity with scalar and vector parameters, and drive variations via material instancing.
Sub UVs5:43
learn to build and animate a 4x4 flipbook texture in Unreal, including import, enabling flipbook, looping, frame rate, start position, and a flipbook texture sample in a material.
Sub UVs 219:05
Using Real Video Footage9:20
Learn to bring real video footage into Unreal materials by converting video with rad video tools, importing it as a movie texture, and applying it to screens for emissive glow.
Masked Materials17:08
Explore mask materials in Unreal, comparing one bit opacity masks to translucent alpha, learn to import and apply opacity masks, adjust blend modes, and use normal maps for torn cloth.
Animated Materials 110:51
Explore animated materials in Unreal by building a programmable computer-screen look with sine-wave panners, scan lines, and flickering signals, using texture channels, masks, and sharpening to optimize memory.
Animated Materials 211:49
Animated Materials 316:59
Animated Materials 49:24
Drive grid and bump offsets with a sine-wave time and a panner to pan as you orbit and zoom, creating animated materials in Unreal.

Introduction1:11
Source files for Section 3
Understanding Depth Bias Alpha6:59
Learn how depth bias alpha enables a water material in Unreal to interact with geometry, fading between diffuse and normal maps and driving foam through a lerp for realistic intersection.
Depth Bias Alpha in Action16:53
Visualize applying depth bias alpha to a water material. Build layered normals and foam with lerps, panners, and tiling to create moving wake and foam patterns.
Lava Material Breakdown4:58
Building the Lava 118:30
Building the Lava 212:11
Learn to animate lava layers using world position offset and a time-driven sine wave to create rippling magma on the z axis.
Up Vector Materials 116:31
Up Vector Materials 212:36
Up Vector Materials 312:52
Create ice and snow materials in Unreal by blending base and detail normal maps, tweaking ice normal intensity, refining emissive glow, and adding a sparkle map with up vector lighting.
Up Vector Materials 49:59
Combine a sparkle map with emissive lighting using a texture sample, camera vector, and a component mask to drive a color-tinted glow and controlled bloom.
Up Vector Materials 510:29
Bring the ice material to life by adding an environment map, using reflection vectors with a component mask, and applying color tint, brightness, and a contrast exponent parameter.
Up Vector Materials 6 and Closing13:17
Explore adding noise to cloud textures using up vector transition and dot product to blend maps, control tiling, brightness, and contrast for a polished ice material.
Bonus Lecture: Further Learning with 3dmotive0:18

Requirements

The latest version of the Unreal Development Kit, available here - www.unrealengine.com/udk/downloads/
Photoshop or a similar image editing software

Description

Volume 1

In this video we'll take an introductory look at UDK's material editor. Once we've covered the basics of importing textures and creating our own materials we'll dive into creating some of the more common types of materials you'll encounter in today's games. We'll be creating metal surfaces with reflection, glass, blended materials such as rock and moss, a holographic animated material, and lastly realistic water, complete with animation, reflections and depth based effects.

Volume 2

Continuing where we left off on Materials Volume 1, Bill Kladis takes us through additional materials inside of UDK! We'll start with understanding and creating a "parent" material as we cover Material Instancing, dive into animated Flipbooks, discuss Opacity and how it works, explore how to apply a "real" video or movie to your assets, and then dive into an advanced material creating a customized and complex animated sequence!

Volume 3

Continuing from Materials Volume 2, Bill Kladis takes us through even more advanced materials inside of UDK! In this course we tackle the Elements! We cover "Depth Bias Alpha" on water, showing how to cause the normals to bend around an object, we show how to make a convincing Lava material flow down a stream and move along a path with awesome distortion effects, then move on to the motherload - procedural ice and snow on an object that points "up" in the direction of the object!

About the Instructors:

Ryan Smith is a Technical Artist at Gearbox Software, who specializes in technical art and visual effects. With over 10 years experience working with the Unreal Engine, he is highly proficient with 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, and Zbrush. His specialties also include Shader Authoring, Visual Effects, Technical Art, MAXScript, and Optimizing Workflows.

Bill Kladis has worked in the games industry for over 7 years specializing in Realtime VFX. He currently works as a VFX Artist with shipped titles including Injustice: Gods Among Us, Mortal Kombat, Batman: Arkham City Lockdown, Lego Universe, & PAIN. He also is the founder of imbueFX, a site that specializes solely on tutorials in Realtime VFX.

Who this course is for:

Absolute beginners who want to learn the material editor inside of UDK
Anyone interested in learning how to create basic-to-advanced shaders and materials in UDK

The Complete Introduction to Materials in Unreal

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

UDK Materials Volume 19 lectures • 1hr 23min

UDK Materials Volume 211 lectures • 2hr 11min

UDK Materials Volume 313 lectures • 2hr 17min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: