🔠Channels & Using/Editing Maps
How to enable/disable Channels, and how to adjust textures.
Depending on your needs, you'll have to choose one out of three Master Shaders. These are the Standard, Tessellated and Translucent Variants. The Standard is the standard one that is going to be used most often. (Any surface that dosen't require translucency or Tessellation)
The Translucent is for use with translucent surfaces (e.g Glass).
The Tessellated is for use with surfaces that need additionnal detail with a Displacement Map.
For Unreal Engine 5 users : Epic deprecated Tessellation in UE5 so disregard the Tessellated variant as it won't work properly !
The Nanite 5.0 variant is for use with Nanite meshes as of the initial 5.0 version. Unreal Engine 5.1 Nanite supports World Position Offset and Opacity Mask, making it compatible with the regular variant.
The default textures included will tell what kind of texture is expected in each channel (Grayscale RAW, Color sRGB or Color RAW.) You should adjust your textures accordingly to avoid color space issues.
Supported Channels
The Tessellated variant is basically the Standard shader, plus a Displacement Channel & DIstance based Tessellation Controls.
The channels with a * will use a uniform value if Disabled, in the section 00 - Default Values for Disabled Channels (Shown Below.)
Enabling/Disabling Channels
To enable/disable Channels, you just have to check/uncheck the box of the channel you want to change. The Images below show the changes in the Interface :
It's possible to use either a packed "Occlusion-Roughness-Metallic" Texture file, or separate textures.
It's recommended to use ORM Textures as much as possible for optimization reasons !
They can be enabled in the Global Settings (Next Page.)
Some Channels have options associated to them, to allow quick editing of their settings.
Color/Grayscale Map Adjustements
The Color & Grayscale maps can be adjusted when the Map Adjustement option is checked in the Advanced Features (more details in the next page).
Here are the available adjustements (processed from top to bottom:)
It's also possble to use a Mask to only edit some parts of the texture !
Options Per Channel
Ambient Occlusion
Dynamic Ambient Occlusion
Uses the AO Map to darken the base color and reduce the Specular of the material. Useful to use AO on a mesh that can't be baked (UE normally only uses AO for baking which isn't always an option).
If enabled, the mesh won't have AO baked in, it's separated from the normal way of doing AO.
Emissive
Emissive Force
How strong the Emissive Layer is. Has a Glow effect when the force is very strong.
Uniform Color
If enabled, uses a uniform color that can then be masked instead of an emissive mask. The mask can be panned, UV scaled independentely of the global settings.
NormalMap / Tangent
Flatness Offset
Flatten the Normalmap Depth effect ; from 1 (Completely flat) to -2 (2x as Strong)
Invert
Inverts the Normal Depth (e.g What seemingly goes to the exterior goes to the interior.)
Opacity Mask
Offset
Applies more or less strongly the Opacity Mask, useful to fine-tune the opacity and avoid outlines.
Use Alpha of Base Color for Opacity Mask/Map
Uses the A channel of the Base Color as the Opacity Mask/map depending if the variant is the Standard or the Translucent.
All Channels except the Normal ones have Color/Grayscale Adjustement Support (not shown in this section.)
Tessellation & Displacement
The Tessellated variant has Tessellation enabled by default, with settings that can be changed in the Global Settings.
You can however disable the use of a Displacement map on the Global Material, but use some for the Vertex Painting layers.
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