I’ve been working for some days on the theory part of the thesis (most boring part, but it’s important to research methods). Besides that, I really wanted to do some tests with the road and vertex painting.
One project i made some months ago had a street with buildings at the sides, and a modular road. The final result of the road was a little bit “flat” so I decided that for this project I would learn vertex painting and make some awesome materials 
I’ve made a material that is going to contain the asphalt and the pavement. Also it has vertex painting for puddles and dirt!! (thanks to tutorial). Also I made some tests with substance designer to make a texture for the “asphalt”
The final material is this (sorry for the mess, a lot of stuff inside hehe)
And some screenshots of the material applied to a tessellated plane:
----------------------UPDATE-----------------------------
Here it is a quick update:
Basically, what I did first was in photoshop create a 2048x2048 document, in Edit/Precerences/Guides,Grid & Slices I set up the gridline at 64 pixels (also changed the colour) and 1 subdivision. Then when I press Control+H I can see the guides that are 64px size.
I made a “guide” texture by drawing lines in the guides in that document and exported that document to a png.
In 3D’s max, I set the units to “generic units” and I created a plane of 2048x2048 with 32 length segments and 42 width segments. That way I converted it to edit poly and selecting polygons I detached rows that I used to start modeling the trims
Back in photoshop, when I’m creating the texture (using the AO and NM baked from max), I can create quick masks using the guides
- Concrete High Poly Objects:
So this is the concrete texture applied to a plane right now:
I want that kind of clean concrete in order to match it with the references (later then I can change the global colour in UE4). I would love to see some feedback in order to improve the texture.
The metal texture will be similar. The good thing is that they follow the same ammount and size of objects so I can easily have variations of the same trim by swaping the textures (I can even make a wood trim texture). Inside UE4 I’ll be able to modify the global concrete and metal colours.
After finishing the trim textures, I’ll proceed to make the bricks, slabs, roofs, etc tilleable textures which will have some guides. I’m planning to make them using substance designer, as for tilleable textures is awesome.
----------------UPDATE--------------------
I have been working on the textures and materials of the trims. I have made diffuse, normal, roughness, metallic and colour mask of both concrete and metal (although I am using a pure black for the concrete metallic one). The textures are not finished, I would love some feedback to improve them.
The diffuse part is the only tricky one. Basically what I did was a to lerp between my original diffuse and a colour (exposed to change it in the instanced material) by using the Colour Mask texture as an alpha. The Colour Mas texture is a black and white texture in which I specified which areas I want to affect the tint colour (in white) and which areas I want to keep the original diffuse colour (in black). I use gray tones because I was able to get a better blending between them.
Also the “Cheap Contrast” node is to make the edges softer so that way there is not a huge change between the diffuse and tint colour.
The Tint Ammount and CheapContrastAmmount are also exposed to change them in the material instance.
NOTE: Right now the textures are imported in single files but in the final project I will put the different textures in the channels, so that way I can have the diffuse and normal in single textures and then one texture with the Roughness in the Red channel, Metallic in the Green channel and Colour Mask in the Blue channel.
Some animated gifts to see that I can use a lot of different colours in a easy way being able to change it in the editor.


----------------UPDATE--------------------
Things are starting to look good!!
I finished some brick textures and made a window in order to test the variations and trims.
I decided to use Substande Designer to make the brick textures because I want to have a lot of diferent brick styles for my buildings. This way I can easily swap the materials and create tons of variations.
Following a tutorial by @pipesfranco, I made a complex brick generator with 3 different brick styles (2 regular bricks, 1 slab). All the important parameters are exposed so I can change them inside of UE4 and get cool variations.
Modeling was the next step, I wanted to be sure that everything was perfectly lined by the grid and proportions were correct.
Following
@jacob07777 breackdowns, I unrwaped the model in a way that will always tile (I also placed the seams in the grouts so is not that noticeable)
And here it is the test inside of UE4. As you can see, using this method I can get easy variations with just 1 geometry. This way I will be able to make different buildings in an easy way.
As you can see, its the same geometry but the brick texture change, as well as the window frames which use the trim textures and the window glasses.
Closer look of it 
My next step is to model a lot of different windows, doors, stores pieces so I can make some buildings!!
Again, any feedback will be very much appreciate it