Creating a master material with channel switch for different texture channels

Development Rendering
1

Hey all,

I’ve put together a foliage pack from various free and purchased packs (for personal use) - some grasses from this pack, other grasses and foliage from a separate pack etc. As I currently am using assets from about 5 different packs, I have a ton of master materials. I’m trying to reduce that as much as possible and have material instances for the various meshes.

For the most part I’m able to condense to a primary master material (say for all my grasses) but I’m having a problem when some packs use specific channels for Specular/AO/Roughness masks. As they each have their own set up, I need a way for the material instance to channel select from the given texture parameter, and I can’t figure out how to do it. I can set up a static bool to select say, the red or green channel, but then I can’t select the blue channel or the alpha. Ideally, I would have a 4 way switch that would take a parameter I can set in the instance to choose which channel to use for a given material attribute. I don’t need to set this dynamically, just in the instance.

Is there a way to do this?

EDIT: I realize I could literally add a unique texture parameter 4 times with each hooked up to a bool and then set 3 of them to false and one to true - but I’d like a more elegant way if possible.

2

Just place a Component Mask node, right click on it, then “Convert to Parameter.” Do that for each material input, so for instance 1 texture parameter for RMA/OMR/etc with 3 Component Mask parameters to roughness, metalness, and AO, or whatever you use the channels for.

2 Likes
3

Ooooh, so hook up the RGBA channel of my texture parameter to the component mask, then the output of the mask to the material attribute, then I can use the checkbox to choose the channel?

4

https://answers.unrealengine.com/que…ic-switch.html

Check the screenshot with the if nodes. :slight_smile:

Edit: @rosegoldslugs Solution is better, I didnt knew that this is possible to convert the component mask to a parameter. @Alwaysusa yes, exactly like that you described.

1 Like
5

That’s great. I’m going to use the component mask. It’s exactly what I wanted just sitting there all along. I tried to figure out that static bool logic but couldn’t get past it for some reason. That screenshot seems so obvious now I look at it lol.

Anyway - great tips all round. Thank you!