Is there a section or sites that have free materials to dl and use? Having a hard time grasping this whoe node thingy. I wish ue4 materials were made like regular render programs.
You can get the substance plugin for UE4, then get yourself an indie license ($20 a month for the WHOLE package + 20/30 free materials per month + as many materials as you want in substance share). You can then import the substance materials ( .sbsar files) inside the engine with the plugin.
I keep a decent chunk updated here: https://github.com/joymachinegames/joymachine-public/tree/master/ue4/materials
The master materials aren’t exactly the most approachable things in the world (I had to figure out a way to keep instruction/sampler count low), but there’s a decent combination of use-cases and a bunch of material functions there.
You can use materials from projects in the Learn tab in the Epic Games Launcher. There’s also a bunch of materials in the engine content, in the content browser click the bottom right thingy and tick Show Engine Content.