How to learn Materials?
Ok, so a simple question really, How do I learn about materials?
I have watched the tutorial series on YouTube and have read the UE4 documentation but still dont know how to do great materials.
I can create good PBR textures and at the moment just slot them into the relevant slot and im done(they look ok/good). The most technical I get is using multiply and a constant. I understand things in theory but dont ever find the need to use anything like Lerp etc.
When I see the materials with the big spider diagrams, wires going everywhere, I don't understand whats going on or more importantly the need for any of it.
Please any help in how others became good at this sort of thing would be appreciated.
I have watched the tutorial series on YouTube and have read the UE4 documentation but still dont know how to do great materials.
I can create good PBR textures and at the moment just slot them into the relevant slot and im done(they look ok/good). The most technical I get is using multiply and a constant. I understand things in theory but dont ever find the need to use anything like Lerp etc.
When I see the materials with the big spider diagrams, wires going everywhere, I don't understand whats going on or more importantly the need for any of it.
Please any help in how others became good at this sort of thing would be appreciated.
Replies
For basic stuff I think there's a few functions you might want to try, just to get an idea of where to start and to give you more control. Hooking up samplers directly will work, but your values will just go from 0 to 100% which is rarely optimal unless you have magical texture skillz.
Number one function I've used for 99% of my mats is the clamp. It'll allow you to set minimum and maximum values for litterally anything. Also don't underestimate the power of lerps. You can combine, merge, (detail) mask, do all kinds of things with those.
In the end it's about what you want to do. If a simple setup works as required there's no reason to increase the shader complexity. Start simple and slowly expand/learn based on the effects you want, not the other way around.
There's also this video on how to create/ setup a master material.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q06xv6nlMHk
I know the theory discussed in that video will most likely apply to every engine but how about the practicality of it; does the UE4 has a similar shading workflow as the UE3 ?
I was wondering the same thing, since UE4 uses PBR we know for a fact that many of the main inputs act differently, specular for instance, or AO. But I assumed shader logic remains shader logic overall, so I was looking at Andrew's stuff and wondering if it's still a good intro anyway.
Most of it, yes. Math is math and most nodes remained the same really.
Most if not all UDK material tutorials can still be followed in UE4 and get very similar results, so if you're finding yourself scarce with tutorials or documentation (which I doubt, there's a lot of stuff out there already) don't be afraid to check some of the better UDK tuts out there.
Thanks Helder! Since you mention there's a lot out there I was wondering if you had something to recommend in particular?
This is a personal favourit as well, Tor's DVD which is ironically on Eat3d as well:
http://eat3d.com/udk_modular
Extra: http://eat3d.com/free/vertex_painting
Also, I learned A LOT with Aaron's tutorials on gumroad:
https://gumroad.com/aaronkaminer
I'm in the same boat as you, started learning UE4 material workflow and it can daunting because there's so many different ways to basically do the same thing, and my OCD hates that I might not be using the most ideal one for my case.
I started diving into functions and layered materials as well, that's another rabbit hole right there because it makes things so simple it makes me wanna go back and redo most of my master materials, eheh.
Have fun!
If you don't understand why some materials have massive spaghetti-wires going all over the place, it's probably because you could do the end-result in Photoshop with a good PBR workflow.
However, at some point you'll need to make a moving lava texture that take into account the surface underneath to flow properly, or you'll need to change a fresnel depending on the angle and you'll dig into it... Or even a way to nicely tile road textures and details GTAV-style.
Many material samples by Epic are insanely complicated for the sake of realism, showing off and displaying UE4 capabilities.
Start simple, and when you encounter a blocker you'll try to figure out ! I don't think there's a real way to "learn" materials as they allow virtually everything