Same material/texture, different base color.

jake1210

So today I have a scene I am creating that is modular and has plenty of the same textures just with different colors. I feel like adding the same textures multiple times on the texture atlas with color variation seems like a waste. With that being said I feel like having multiple materials just for change in color seems like a waste of draw calls. I have uploaded an image on my scene with highlights on 2 walls I would want to make the color changes, my texture atlas and a street similar to what I am trying to portray with this question. Basically as you see the same concrete is used multiple times and the main difference is the color. Maybe a decal with the color overlapping the walls would be less expensive way? Any ideas? 

jake1210

Side Note : I have read about "Material Instances", but I am not sure how you would set this up due to the texture atlas.

jake1210

So I ended up figuring this out if anyone comes across trying to change colors of a Texture Atlas on the fly. You would need to seperate each "base color" texture and connect all to different hueshifts with blank vector parameters attached. After that you would use "Lerp" to combine them one by one, right click the material, create material instance, and then with this done you should get different variable based on each base color! Hope this helps someone

Bletzkarn

I don't know much about UE4 atm but I noticed it's pretty easy to give a material a color tint by just multiplying the diffuse with a color. So could you not use that + instances? Going further you could set a random value for the tint within the material (clamped obviously). I guess you would need to apply a unique instance each time for that to work.

jake1210

I was more-so just worried about the draw calls doing that and found it hard to get a lower saturated color due to the atlas being so widely used. Now I am not sure about having as many nodes as I do in my material being a major drawback or not as I have 3 parameters for each base-color texture (Brightness,Saturation,Tint). I was looking into vertex colors though which seems to be much less expensive, but again I can't quite get that saturated feel I am going back and forth from.