How to make Glass / Transparent materials SUPER fast to render : UE4

✅ UE5 Beginners Materials Course : bit.ly/3Num1pr
[Description]
Making glass in UE4 can be hard. An its even harder to get it running fast. In this video we will be going over different material setups for creating cheap versions of glass and transparent materials in UE4.
[Courses]
UE5 material creation course : bit.ly/3Num1pr
3d modeling for beginners: bit.ly/3GGHvvo
Video game weapon creation course: bit.ly/4amAg9h
UE4 Lighting for beginners course: bit.ly/3uYCGLb
[Time Stamps]
00:00 - Intro
00:40 - Breakdown
00:55 - Shader Complexity
02:04 - Additive Material
04:28 - Additive Material Breakdown
06:10 - Translucent Material
07:22 - Modulate Material
08:45 - Outro

[@o.k.m2588]

This was exactly what I needed, thank you ! Ive been working with the visual side of unreal for about 5 years, and i just sorta assumed that transparent materials were just super expensive, like, thats just how it is, but this really opened my eyes and gives me mountains of ideas. Thank you !

[@alexhooi7268]

Thank you for the awesome tutorial, instantly got great looking glass thanks to this.
As an artist whose forte isn't programming or shader wrangling, I really appreciate it.

[@FluteboxFan]

This is an amazing resource for beginning developers like me, really appreciate you sharing it!

[@Drawcall]

Glad it was helpful!

[@ashleysparling]

Thank you this is perfect.

[@madebyjway6019]

Bro! thank you. Such a simple solution.

[@CombatFXZone]

Thank you! Great explanation and tutorial :)

[@Crush-kc8ss]

Loved the tutorial. would love to see more of a breakdown. Like showing you actually building this. I paused your video and made my blueprint from squinting at the screen and reading your info.. probably not 100% accurate but very close with what i had to work with.

[@philzarcone]

Straightforward and packed with useful information, thank you for sharing this excellent tutorial! The modulate blend mode solution is exactly what I was looking for, and is substantially more performant than the standard translucency blend mode without sacrificing very much fidelity (the fresnel color highlight node is a great addition to the shader btw).

[@Drawcall]

Glad it was helpful!

[@etawil51]

great tutorral tnx you very much !

[@AdiusOmega]

Great video! Incredibly useful knowledge, bless ya lil soul.

[@Drawcall]

My soul is so blessed :)

[@misterrider19]

Thanks a lot for this video, I didn't had that much knowledge about glass in ue4 and for performance it's gonna be just awesome. I have a whole world in my game that will have a lot of glass, and I was struggling with the performance and it was just appearing mostly red through the "shader complexity" viewmode. I was using a glass material from an asset pack but it seems like it wasn't that much optimized.

[@Nick_fb]

Great stuff

[@Drawcall]

Thanks, really appreciate it. :)

[@reket777pvl]

I guess it doesnt work in SM5. When I conect reflection vector WS to Texure sample I got an error

[@HardEzhik]

Very useful video! What music plays on background?

[@koolkat0002]

Thanks for the simple tutorial! I was wondering, how did you set up the texture you used? I don't know much about cubemaps, so I just plugged in a panorama jpeg as a texture but it doesn't to work. Thank you!

[@Crush-kc8ss]

I searched for Desert HDRI and it popped up in menu to use

[@johnfr2389]

Do these modes properly handle depth sorting in all cases?

[@tonirak241]

I tried it but it's not that cheap, I don't know if I am missing something, shader complexity shows red color, blend mode is already set to additive, any idea?

[@polar1991]

Can you make a beginner material series?

[@Drawcall]

This is something I can do. :)

[@BadVoodooMon]

Great tutorial as usual! Quick question: for the first cheap glass material, I have it set up the exact way that you do. But for some reason, I have nearly double the instruction count. What's strange is at 4:28 I noticed most of your pins are grayed out even though you're in the "default lit" Shading Model. Usually the pins are grayed out like that when in the "unlit" Shading Model. Am I missing a setting that makes this cheaper in default lit mode? Thanks!

[@Drawcall]

Make sure blend mode is additive ?

[@BadVoodooMon]

@@Drawcall strange, I must have missed that on screen. Getting caught up in the details! Thanks!

[@realmodel1132]

Very informative. SceneColor seems to be a common method to create opaque but "transparent" water. Any insights how this is different to additive shading it seems to be a very similar thing ? And would it be useful for glass visually. Also: resubscribed =)

[@Drawcall]

I think because scene color is a post effect it’s not being culled in the depth buffer were as the additive material is still being rendered with the right occlusion it’s math to render is still just adding it’s color information very cheaply.

[@charlesalexanderable]

2:55 additive isn't cheap because of depth, I think it is because alpha blending requires division and more dependent reads or something

[@Drawcall]

Agreed, the geo must still be passed into the depth buffer for proper occlusion. Because of the additive nature the operation is communitive and can remove the need to be sorted from back to front. So it still needs to be passed but it should happen much faster without the extra z sort before the drawcall is issued. Again I could be a bit off so let me know.

[@Djonsing]

Why don't I have 'Bubble Color' in the list? (UE 4.26)

[@reket777pvl]

because its just a parameter. You create blank parameter and name it Bubble color or anything elseXD

[@jaddeeb510]

Ez render = ez like

[@Drawcall]

[@unrealstudent2239]

you could have mentioned what the different node types are i wanted to copy the setup but i cant tell what kind they are

[@michaelanderson2861]

why dont I have like 95% of the blueprint nodes he does?

[@testoftimegaming5219]

what version are you using ?