Hi everyone,
Just a quick question. I am new to Unreal and have no clues how the nodes in Material graphs are made. Are there any books that teaches how to make materials? I think it should be in the category of Computing Graphics? Thanks!
Best,
Chenglin
Hello wcl1993,
There are many different ways to make materials. It all comes down to what type of material you are trying to achieve. Until recently, within the past few years, materials were faked and were not made at run time. The shininess you saw was baked on and meant to stay consistent throughout the time that it was drawn on screen. Now technology has caught up to allow for things like run time rendering, PBR (Physically Based Rendering) materials, and dynamic shadows. All of this is an attempt to bump up the realism and deal with the increasing demand of the gaming/movie market.
I am linking you to our documentation that deals with materials in UE4. There you will find explanations on types of materials, different nodes and their references, and import implementations and theories. I believe this will be a good place to start before spending money on a book that may or may not answer questions you could have.
Thank you for the answer. I did watch the documents and I found the content very extensive, varying from novice level to master level. But it didn’t give specific explanations on how the nodes are connected and why they are connected like so in material graph. I have obtain a general knowledge about material and would like to know a bit more about the “why-part” of the story. That’s why I say I need a textbook for that. Thanks!
The seventh video in this series deals with the material graph. In short, there are many resources to choose from but there isn’t something, that I’ve found, that says this is how this material works and how each node works together to get that material. Much of the sources you will find is based on theory and comes from a greater knowledge of how materials work, and how different mathematical functions can influence different channels to create a result you want. It is hard to say " this does this, and do this here to achieve this " without getting into the depth of how each individual node works. To do that we would have a book that would be incredibly lengthy.
This may not be what you are after but there is not, in UE4, I think what you are looking for specifically. The website I linked you earlier is a great place to start and you can search our wiki for nodes and clarification. I believe following tutorials and gaining a greater base knowledge of materials would benefit you until you reach the point of experimentation.
I see. So I think I will go over the websites for a better understanding of it. Thank you so much for the explain!
Best,
Chenglin