Combining different Materials at Runtime

Development Rendering
1

Hello everybody,

i’d like to know if there’s a way of combining different materials, preferably at run-time.

Let’s say I have different materials set up for different kinds of metal, wood, plastic and fabric. Furthermore I have an asset of a chair at my hands, consisting only of a frame and the cushions. Now, I’d like to be able to put a certain material on the frame of the chair and a different one on the cushions.

Of course I was looking around for a solution. I fumbled around with material functions by putting every material setup I have into a function returning a material attribute. Then I created a template material using 2 material functions and a blend mask. I hoped I would be able to create an material instance of this and then set the material functions as parameters to be set at run-time. However, either I overlooked something, or this is not possible.

Now, I tried the high-level graphical way. Is there any way using blueprints or low-level C++ code? I’ll everything give a shot.

All in all, I just want to avoid having to create a material for every permutation of material functions. Thanks in advance for your help

2

You could use multiple Materials on different parts of the mesh by setting up the mesh to have multiple materials before hand. I don’t know what tools you use, but, for example, if you had 3DS Max you would assign a “Multi-Sub Object Material” which would allow you to have multiple materials on a single object. Or, in Maya you would simply assign different materials to different parts of the mesh.

3

Good idea, however unfortunately not possible. I have to work with what I get and I don’t really have a say in that regard. Seems like I have to create the permutations then.