You can search "parameter" when adding a node in the material editor, or right click on an existing node and convert it to a parameter. Then it'll show up in your material instance list.
Just tried to find what you were talking about, there's no vertex painting in the modeling tools. Enabling nanite still breaks vertex painting as I thought.
@@Procedural_Minds Just wanted to mention the workaround I've found for vertex painting in nanite. You disable nanite, vertex paint, make sure you hit apply, then when you convert it to nanite your painting stays put. One thing to mention though is that it will repeat on any instance you make...so its not great for kits as you would need a completely separate mesh for each piece.
Nanite meshes can still contain vertex color data, to be used as masks to drive various material computations, it just has to be baked into the mesh either in the 3D authoring program or possibily in engine with the modelling tools and applying it permanently to it. It won't work with overridden vertex painting. Do keep in mind if you're driving various material math and using the vertex color as masked data, if the masks are really sharp you'll see a visual pop as you move further away from your mesh as nanite decimates it down, so try to keep your vertex color masks a bit more blurry and more non descript if you wish to go this route.
When I first did this, back in 5.2 I tried baking in vertex paint data from a 3D program, but as soon a I enabled nanite it stopped working, disabling the nanite made the vertex paint work again. In 5.3 I believe this works though.
Is there a way to paint layered materials without vertex paint...to get smoother paint lines? May I ask, is Layered Materials just as strong as Substance Painter?
You can just use RGBA masks to have complete control over how it blends separate from vertex count. Layered Materials can be as strong as you want them to be, but you have to set it up. So you can even do blending modes, but it's not setup out of the box.
great explanation but can i ask with the main different between material layer and old layered material system in unreal or with other words what the advanced of it instead old layered material system
What is the old layered material system? I believe there's only one layered material system in Unreal. The other way of doing it is to manually put it all together in the main material itself, but then you're stuck with that amount of layers.
@@Procedural_Minds thanks for your replay yeah thats what i mean what the advanced of this way? and i can got all the functionality in other manually way?
hello, great tutorial. I am having problem with a error sayig i exeeded maximum samples. I was only using rough,norm,base,metal and it worked but i think i changed something. The error is x4510. Any advice?
@@alexanubis1 I googled "ue5 implicit tuncation of vector type" and from what I can tell you're using a cheap contrast, not a cheap contrast RGB when you're dealing with multiple channels.
Is it possible to bring this and the Height Blending system efficiently inside a master material ? If yes, then any suggestions on where should I put them ?
Absolutely, I have that already in my master material. You just chain multiply the controls in the layer blend section. Then they effectively play together really nicely.
Guess I'll have to wait a while for your master material to come out (if you plan to release it). I'm using a master material function and I'm using your vertex blend and height blend chains with switches at the very end of that function (after MakeMaterialAttributes node). Unfortunately, that version doesn't work as intended and doesn't allow to add layers, as it does when used separately. Is there any timeframe when your master material be out ? Or can you make a short tutorial on how to set it up inside the master ? Thanks for the reply.
@@voldemortsplace762 I want to release it sometime this year, but most likely early next year. But I am now planning on starting to do some live streams of me working on my full setup some time in the next week or two, so people can ask stuff then, and I can more easily show / demonstrate different things.
Hi, I’m currently working on optimizing my project’s materials and am exploring efficient ways to share data, such as masks, tweaked vertex colors, and UV scaling, across different material layers or within material layer blends. I understand that sharing these parameters can significantly simplify the material setup by reducing the redundancy of inputs and potentially streamlining the workflow. However, beyond simplifying parameters, I’m curious about the performance implications of this approach. Could someone explain how to effectively share data like masks, tweaked vertex colors, and UV scaling across material layers or blends? Additionally, does this method of sharing data between layers or blends offer any performance benefits, such as reducing shader complexity or improving render times? I’m particularly interested in understanding if there are best practices or specific techniques within Unreal Engine that facilitate this kind of data sharing while also optimizing material performance. Thank you for your insights!
The main place you you save is in texture memory when using vertex paint. Reusing tiling textures even 1000 times still counts as 1 texture cost. So if you setup a more complex material that allows for control but reuses the same textures, it'll be significantly cheaper than 1000 unique textures with a much much simpler material.
Hi, thanks for your reply. Another question on this topic is how to share information across MLs and MLBs. for example, I created a procedural mask that will be used in different material layers, in traditional material, I just added a Name Reroute and recalled it in each block since they are in the same network editor. However, I couldn't find a good way to share the mask across MLs and MLBs.
@@wayancientmoon1142 You expose it and then pipe it into the ML or MLB in the layer menu. If you always use the same ones, you can make a version that has the ones you want to use always as the defaults.
Is this resource heavy? If I for example use this for all of my objects, I'm planning to apply snow on top of objects without using height maps. Will this be a good way to do it?
If you want snow on the tops, then there's better ways to do it, but in terms of layered setups it's pretty light since there's barely any extra computations on top. For snow tops you could do a top down angle mask. So it masks the tops of objects, instead of having to paint each one, and that way it can be rotated and still always have snow on top. I can also do a tutorial for something like that if you'd like. :)
@@Procedural_Minds I didn't see this! Yes please! I'm making a retro style game and all I want to do is to be able to blend textures together and paint snow on objects and the world in the engine directly without touching the base texture. I think I'm going to make a master material from where I can control this, paint shadows using vertex painting and create a sort of ps1-esque look using world position and manipulate the polygons.
I don't think it will honestly. The workflows will stay the same from everything I've seen, the only difference is that you'll just have different inputs, and maybe a toggle to go between the two versions. I plan to convert my entire system to substrate as well once it's released. :)
How so? Even with 5.4 vertex painting still isn't properly working with nanite the same way it does for non-nanite objects. You can't paint the vertexes on the same object different ways while it's in the level. Vertex painting can be done on a nanite piece but then every copy will have that paint, it won't be unique per object like the typical way vertex paint is used.
Yeah, nanite doesn't support it. And it makes sense cause nanite vertexes don't stay consistent, they are constantly changing depending on distance and settings.
This is the worst tutorial i watched in a long time. Not everyone is as fast as you. You cutting out portions of the video to make it faster, confused me multiple times throughout the video. Its just annoying when you have to stop the video every 2 two seconds to apply the steps and not being able to hear a sentence without rewatching!
How do I get the texture parameter values when applying the different textures in the material instance?
You can search "parameter" when adding a node in the material editor, or right click on an existing node and convert it to a parameter. Then it'll show up in your material instance list.
@@Procedural_Minds How do I convert a node into a parameter?
@@Procedural_MindsI found it!
You can paint nanite with modeling tools vertex painting
Really? I've tried it not too long ago and it broke as soon as I moved away and nanite reductions took over. I'll need to give it anther go.
Just tried to find what you were talking about, there's no vertex painting in the modeling tools. Enabling nanite still breaks vertex painting as I thought.
@@Procedural_Minds vertex painting in ue5.3 modeling tools
@@ijerofei Ah, I'm not using 5.3 since it's still in preview. That's great to know it's possibly going to work later. That's pretty exciting! :)
@@Procedural_Minds Just wanted to mention the workaround I've found for vertex painting in nanite. You disable nanite, vertex paint, make sure you hit apply, then when you convert it to nanite your painting stays put. One thing to mention though is that it will repeat on any instance you make...so its not great for kits as you would need a completely separate mesh for each piece.
Another great tutorial, many thanks, hope to see more layered material tutorials 😊 can you do tutorial on object scale? Using the new layers?
Absolutely! It's very simple to scale the tiling on certain layers based on the objects scale, is that what you mean? Or is it something else?
Nanite meshes can still contain vertex color data, to be used as masks to drive various material computations, it just has to be baked into the mesh either in the 3D authoring program or possibily in engine with the modelling tools and applying it permanently to it. It won't work with overridden vertex painting.
Do keep in mind if you're driving various material math and using the vertex color as masked data, if the masks are really sharp you'll see a visual pop as you move further away from your mesh as nanite decimates it down, so try to keep your vertex color masks a bit more blurry and more non descript if you wish to go this route.
When I first did this, back in 5.2 I tried baking in vertex paint data from a 3D program, but as soon a I enabled nanite it stopped working, disabling the nanite made the vertex paint work again. In 5.3 I believe this works though.
Is there a way to paint layered materials without vertex paint...to get smoother paint lines? May I ask, is Layered Materials just as strong as Substance Painter?
You can just use RGBA masks to have complete control over how it blends separate from vertex count.
Layered Materials can be as strong as you want them to be, but you have to set it up. So you can even do blending modes, but it's not setup out of the box.
great explanation but can i ask with the main different between material layer and old layered material system in unreal or with other words what the advanced of it instead old layered material system
What is the old layered material system? I believe there's only one layered material system in Unreal. The other way of doing it is to manually put it all together in the main material itself, but then you're stuck with that amount of layers.
@@Procedural_Minds thanks for your replay
yeah thats what i mean what the advanced of this way? and i can got all the functionality in other manually way?
@@oznfts5649 This method is modular. You can put as many or as few layers in this system.
@@Procedural_Minds thanks I’ll try use it with more complex stuff to discover it more specially it’s looks powerful with using mask
hello, great tutorial. I am having problem with a error sayig i exeeded maximum samples. I was only using rough,norm,base,metal and it worked but i think i changed something. The error is x4510. Any advice?
i fixed it, had to change texture sample nodes to be shared wrap
@@deery4389 Glad you got it figured out. Shared wrap does indeed allow you to bypass that limit. :)
would it be possible to add more then what you have added?
If you mean more layers, then absolutely. Add as many as you want. Just keep an eye out for your shader complexity. :)
for some reason, I'm not able to add more the 3 material layers to the material instance before it gives an error
@@alexanubis1 What is the error you're getting?
@@Procedural_Minds it's saying "implicit tuncation of vector type (-woonversion)
@@alexanubis1 I googled "ue5 implicit tuncation of vector type" and from what I can tell you're using a cheap contrast, not a cheap contrast RGB when you're dealing with multiple channels.
Is it possible to bring this and the Height Blending system efficiently inside a master material ? If yes, then any suggestions on where should I put them ?
Absolutely, I have that already in my master material. You just chain multiply the controls in the layer blend section. Then they effectively play together really nicely.
Guess I'll have to wait a while for your master material to come out (if you plan to release it).
I'm using a master material function and I'm using your vertex blend and height blend chains with switches at the very end of that function (after MakeMaterialAttributes node). Unfortunately, that version doesn't work as intended and doesn't allow to add layers, as it does when used separately.
Is there any timeframe when your master material be out ? Or can you make a short tutorial on how to set it up inside the master ?
Thanks for the reply.
@@voldemortsplace762 I want to release it sometime this year, but most likely early next year. But I am now planning on starting to do some live streams of me working on my full setup some time in the next week or two, so people can ask stuff then, and I can more easily show / demonstrate different things.
HI there, Can you export the textures that you painted on that mesh? Is there a way?
Once you apply the vertex paint on a nanite mesh, I believe you can just export it back out and make sure vertex paint is enabled and you'll get it.
thank you so much! was getting so tired of seeing qixel birdge this and that , Hero!
You're very welcome, glad to help! :)
Hi, I’m currently working on optimizing my project’s materials and am exploring efficient ways to share data, such as masks, tweaked vertex colors, and UV scaling, across different material layers or within material layer blends. I understand that sharing these parameters can significantly simplify the material setup by reducing the redundancy of inputs and potentially streamlining the workflow. However, beyond simplifying parameters, I’m curious about the performance implications of this approach.
Could someone explain how to effectively share data like masks, tweaked vertex colors, and UV scaling across material layers or blends? Additionally, does this method of sharing data between layers or blends offer any performance benefits, such as reducing shader complexity or improving render times? I’m particularly interested in understanding if there are best practices or specific techniques within Unreal Engine that facilitate this kind of data sharing while also optimizing material performance.
Thank you for your insights!
The main place you you save is in texture memory when using vertex paint. Reusing tiling textures even 1000 times still counts as 1 texture cost. So if you setup a more complex material that allows for control but reuses the same textures, it'll be significantly cheaper than 1000 unique textures with a much much simpler material.
Hi, thanks for your reply. Another question on this topic is how to share information across MLs and MLBs. for example, I created a procedural mask that will be used in different material layers, in traditional material, I just added a Name Reroute and recalled it in each block since they are in the same network editor. However, I couldn't find a good way to share the mask across MLs and MLBs.
@@wayancientmoon1142 You expose it and then pipe it into the ML or MLB in the layer menu. If you always use the same ones, you can make a version that has the ones you want to use always as the defaults.
Is this resource heavy? If I for example use this for all of my objects, I'm planning to apply snow on top of objects without using height maps. Will this be a good way to do it?
If you want snow on the tops, then there's better ways to do it, but in terms of layered setups it's pretty light since there's barely any extra computations on top. For snow tops you could do a top down angle mask. So it masks the tops of objects, instead of having to paint each one, and that way it can be rotated and still always have snow on top. I can also do a tutorial for something like that if you'd like. :)
@@Procedural_Minds I didn't see this! Yes please! I'm making a retro style game and all I want to do is to be able to blend textures together and paint snow on objects and the world in the engine directly without touching the base texture. I think I'm going to make a master material from where I can control this, paint shadows using vertex painting and create a sort of ps1-esque look using world position and manipulate the polygons.
Thank you so much!
Absolutely! If there's anything else you want to learn, never hesitate to ask. :)
how much do you think substrate (when its fully implemented with UI and everything) will change these workflows?
I don't think it will honestly. The workflows will stay the same from everything I've seen, the only difference is that you'll just have different inputs, and maybe a toggle to go between the two versions. I plan to convert my entire system to substrate as well once it's released. :)
thanks mate
You are very welcome! :)
You might want to fix your disclaimer bro but thank you for the video great tut!
How so? Even with 5.4 vertex painting still isn't properly working with nanite the same way it does for non-nanite objects. You can't paint the vertexes on the same object different ways while it's in the level. Vertex painting can be done on a nanite piece but then every copy will have that paint, it won't be unique per object like the typical way vertex paint is used.
Yeah, when enabling \disabling nanite on painted mesh painting brokes
Yeah, nanite doesn't support it. And it makes sense cause nanite vertexes don't stay consistent, they are constantly changing depending on distance and settings.
something is missing in this tutorial...
It is a very old tutorial as many things have changed with the engine, so I'm not surprised there are things that are missing at this point.
This is the worst tutorial i watched in a long time. Not everyone is as fast as you. You cutting out portions of the video to make it faster, confused me multiple times throughout the video. Its just annoying when you have to stop the video every 2 two seconds to apply the steps and not being able to hear a sentence without rewatching!
Sorry you feel that way. I've definitely gotten better over time and will continue to improve as I make more content. :)
Did you figure out the part at 7:37?
1/10 troll comment