Experimenting with Unreal’s Material maker
To get to understand Unreal Engine better, I started to explore its different aspects, and mess around with how the material editor works. Once in the editor, I created a Vector 3 node by holding 3 and left-clicking. This allowed me to change the colour of the material.
After this, I created Vector1 nodes by holding 1 and left clicking, then duplicated it using ctrl + w for the 4 aspects I wanted to mess around with, Metallic, Specular, Roughness and Emissive Color, and I’m going to try and understand what each node does.
By changing the value attached to the metallic module, it allows me to change how shiny the material is, allowing for reflections to show on it.
The next aspect I experimented with was Specular. With this, I found that if you raise the value, it also gives reflections, but doesn’t make the object look metallic like the previous option did, as seen in the screenshot below.
I then moved on to the Roughness node. From my experimentation, changing the roughness makes the material more gritty and less smooth. I could only notice this if I also had a reflective value on it, as it would make the reflections more dull than usual due to the grit, as seen below. with high values, I struggle to see a difference as it fully removes the reflections.
The final thing I experimented with was the Emissive color. This makes the object look like it emits some sort of light, brightening it. It’s a really sensitive value though, as a value of 1 turns the object almost fully white.
After this experimenting, i understand the material making system a lot more now and I understand what each aspect changes, allowing me to mix and match in the future to make my own materials to use in my own games.
