🔠Global Settings

The Global section of the shader covers the global texture parameters you might want to change, including texturing mode, texture format and more.

Triplanar Mapping

Triplanar layers the Material on the 3 Axis of the object. It allows for better texturing on objects will unwrapped or badly stretched UVs or uncommon shapes.

Triplanar Mapping. The texture is projected on each side of the mesh.

Non-Triplanar Mapping. Notice the Texture deformations on top of the sphere.

The smoothness of the transition between each texture can be set in the smoothness setting below the triplanar toggle.

Triplanar Smoothness at 0

Triplanar Smoothness at 0.4

The Triplanar mapping can also be used for only rendering on the X, Y, Z parts of the model. This can be useful for planar surfaces to save instrcutions !

UV Scale

Scales the Texture on the mesh.

UV Scale 1

UV Scale 3

Packed "ORM" Texture (for Rough, Metal, AO)

Allows the use of a packed texture instead of 3 separate texture files for Roughness, Metallic, AmbientOcclusion. These textures can be packed manually or are exported by default on Substance Painter with the "UE4 Packed" preset.

Default, unpacked mapping, with each texture input on their own.

With ORM enabled, a single input covers the 3 channels. The texture options of each layers are still available on their respective function (including Adjustements.)

Advanced Features

The Advanced Features contain additionnal options that are useful in specific cases.

Advanced Options choice.

The options are explained in-depth in the following pages.

This is where you can toggle the Color / Grayscale Map Adjustements, which were mentionned in the previous page. They will appear in their respective channels sections.

Parallax Occlusion Mapping

Parallax Occlusion Mapping allows the use of a heightmap of give the illusion of depth at the fraction of the cost real tessellation would need.

POM Off

POM On. Notice the text coming seemingly out of the mesh.

As this is not real tessellation or depth, the effect can quickly fall apart when seen from certain angles or applied on some mesh shapes.

Parameters

• POM Height Ratio

How strongly the heightmap will be applied. The height can be reversed if input a negative value.

Height Ratio 0.01

Height Ratio 0.05

• Min and Max Steps

The number of times the texture is sampled to create the effect. Min and Max steps are the number of minimum and maximum steps taken depending on the texture.

Texture with a value of 3 min Steps and 10 Max Steps. The previous screenshots were taken with a value of 25 max steps.

Keep in mind that the more steps are taken, the heavier the performance impact will be.

World Position Offset

Allows the material to change the mesh vertices.

For this setting to work properly, the mesh needs to have a decent amount of geometry !

Keep in mind this dosen't affect the bouding box or the collisions !

Parameters

• Inflate

Inflates or deflates the mesh it's applied on. Can be used with a heightmap/mask to "bake" it into the mesh if it has enough geometry.

Inflate 5

Inflate -5

Inflate 5 w/ Heightmap (Mask) Only affects some parts of the mesh.

• XYZ Offset

Offsets the location of the vertices on the X Y Z axis.

• Apply Wind Effect

Applies a wind effect on top of the mesh. The Parameters below define the speed, intensity and weight of the effect. Not affected by the inflate heighmap mask !

If enabled, the WPO can be changed using the Vertex Painting options to allow rudimentary sculpting of the mesh (especially useful for cave walls, for example.)

UV Breaking

There are UV-Breaking features available, which are also comaptible with Triplanar Mapping.

With UV-Breaking

Without UV-Break

Enabling them gives access to 4 parameters that can be tweaked :

• Smoothness

Controls how smooth the transition between the UV-breaking noise are

Smoothness 1 (Default)

Smoothness 0

• Variation Levels / Scale

Controls respectively how many layers of cells there are, and how big.

Variation Levels 0 / Scale 0

Variation Levels 10 / Scale 0

Variation Levels 0 / Scale 10

• Tiling Variation Scale

Controls the ratio of how big/small the texture variations are at their maximum and minimum.

Tiling Variation Scale Offset 0

Tiling Variation Scale Offset 10

The UV Breaking Features CAN'T be used with geometry-changing functions ! So no Tessellation/World Position Offset (will ignore the UV Break) or Parallax Occlusion Mapping (can't be enabled) !