This software frustrates me to no end! The simplest things are so hard to figure out. End rant.
I have a sky material mapped to a plane and the image plugged into the emissive channel of the node, I want to increase the brightness of the sky image. How would I do that?
Thanks!
Multiply the image texture(by 2 or higher) and plug the result to emissive.
That’s greek to me? What do you mean? I want the emissive intensity brighter.
Here is a tutorial that will cover what you want to know. Please let us know if you have any more problems.
Okay, got it. I need to add a node. Seriously since you’re a developer of the software, I know Modo, Blender, 3DS Max, dozens of other programs related to music. This software is the most unintuitive software I have ever used. I don’t come from the gameing world so maybe there is a rhyme to the reason? I come from the Architecture field and I have almost completely given up on UE4 numerous times. Just wanted to pass that on.
I find unreal engine’s material workflow muuuuch more powerful/fun to use than 3ds max/vray/corona. In unreal you get instant feedback, what you see is what you get. It’s just a different workflow (it involves more maths hehe).
Hey RI3DVIZ,
Can you please elaborate some more on the areas of UE4 you find unintuitive? We are always looking for feedback like this so we can see how we can better onboard new users who have experience in other programs but not in UE4. Also can you please share with us things that other programs do that you really like and find intuitive. This could be anything from a workflow that you like to a menu layout that you really like, anything you can provide like that would be super helpful to us. Finally we are constantly trying to improve the way we do things around here so any and all feedback, positive or negative, is always wanted and reviewed so please provide as much feedback as you can.
Cheers-
Sam Deiter
Node based tools are the most powerfull tools I’ve ever seen, be it Blueprints or Materials.
There are tons of examples but here’s one regarding the emissive setting. This is in Blender, I create an emissive material and bam there are the controls I need such as strength/intensity. The first thing most people will want to do is adjust the color and brightness of an emissive material assuming no image texture.
I’ll post here when I get frustrated again with the interface.
PS, I didn’t have access the node editor either to create the emissive material though it’s there if I need it.
I disagree with that in terms of ease of use, Modo’s shader tree is excellent and very powerful. As far as nodes, I think Blenders node system is better than UE4.
The reason there’s not just an emissive intensity property in the material is that for games it has to be very flexible for what the material needs, and it also has to be very efficient so that it runs well. You can do a lot of complex things with a material and the node system with UE4 is very versatile.
I understand that, it’s not intuitive though. Seriously why do I have to add another node just to adjust the color and intensity? There are details/properties for the emissive material why aren’t the two most common ones in the details/properties window?
it’s very easy to use, for someone who doesn’t do any programming the term doesn’t quite make sense, as in why that name for the node, I’m not sure I’d figure out what node to use for that if I didn’t have experience beforehand, but after doing it once it’s easy to remember. If it was a property value then there would also have to be an option to disable that if you have some nodes plugged in, that’s some unnecessary complications when it’s easy enough to just plug in a constant there.
I’ll use blender again as an example, and I don’t like Blender but it makes sense. Create a new material, use the node system, set to emissive and bam here is the node editor screen shot. UE4 maybe easy enough if in fact if you know that for each and everything you need to adjust you need a node, but if that’s the case why have a details panel with anything in it until you add a specific node. I’m not a programmer just a user and from a user stand point I find the software frustrating.
That’s actually kind of a weird way of doing it I think, the 3ds Max node system is similar to UE4 and makes more sense as far as what’s available for you to adjust.
Another thing I found weird, I created an emissive material and applied it to a mesh, the mesh lit up but no light emitted onto the surrounding meshes. I guess a big part of my frustration is I’m trying to use a game engine for Archviz and UE4 is not designed for that use, so things that make perfect sense in other programs aren’t obvious in UE4.
You can have an emissive texture emit lighting, select the object that is using the material and under the Lighting section of the properties check the box that says Use Emissive for Static Lighting
The one problem with that is you don’t know what the emissive lighting units are so you might have to experiment. And it’s only for static lighting, if you use the VXGI system then everything is fully dynamic including emissive lighting.
That’s my point, why do you have to check a parameter for it to work as expected? Another example, to change the resolution of a lightmap on a mesh I must have found 3 places to change it - one I guess is global and one for each mesh item, but I found a third. There seems to be repeating menus all over the place and it gets confusing.
You can change it in the mesh properties (affects all identical meshes) or an override in the mesh detail’s panel which affect only the selected mesh(es). I haven’t found the 3rd, where is it? Is it the global override in the lightmass settings? I never use it because I never use the same value for all my meshes.
also, when you start understanding layered materials and vertex painting and you can see the result in real-time, you definitely don’t want to go back to max/vray/corona material creation hehe! It may not be a feature you use everyday in arch-viz but hand-painting water puddles, dust, leaks, dirt is a very satisfying thing 
