Understanding Materials and Textures
Before we start creating and applying Textures and Materials to our 3D meshes for the current project, let us first understand the concept behind them in Unreal Engine 5. This will give us a good understanding of how Materials and Textures work in Unreal Engine and how we can customize them for our use.
Understanding Materials
Materials (also known as shaders in other 3D applications) are essentially assets created in Unreal Engine that are applied to a 3D mesh to control its appearance. In its simplest form, think of Materials as paint with various properties such as color, Texture, transparency, and other visual characteristics. Materials can be applied to individual parts of an object or whole surfaces such as a landscape, wall, or floor.
Figure 6.1: A library of Materials available in Unreal Engine 5
On a basic level, in Unreal Engine, you can create two types of Materials:
- Procedural-based Materials...
