How to create my own material node?

Development Rendering
, , , , , ,
1

I have a shader I’ve written, and I’m trying to bring it into Unreal. I’ve lerned Unreal has a really nice material node system to create shaders for you. There are a couple of things I am unable to replicate though. For one I have a custom struct in my shader, which I don’t know how to expose to the material editor. The second is for some functions in the shader they return a value, as well as use some inout parameters.

Problem #1:
For the struct I wanted to try and create a new material node type to be used in the material editor, but can’t find enough documentation. For now I could work around this problem, by just using the structs internal variables separately in the editor.

Problem #2:
For the functions with inout parameters I need the custom node to return more than just one output. Again if I could adjust the custom node source code, or create my very own node that would be much appreciated.

The other potential solution I’ve found is to put my shader into a plugin, but this seems even more complicated than trying to expand upon the material editor.

2

Did you look into MaterialFunctions? You can create 1 for your second problem where you have several inputs and outputs.

Unreal’s material editor does not support structs so you’d have to seperate all the variables.

3

Thank you so much! That was exactly what I was looking for. Also by chance would you have any good links to learning about shaders in plugins. Those sound like something cool to learn.