In Unreal Editor 5.2 Is there an equivalent to Blueprints (reusable via a Blueprints Library) for Materials Graphs?
I am making very heavy use of parametrised UV effects for lots of different images and videos and want to be able to reuse recipes I develop just as one can with Blueprints collated in a Blueprints library. Currently all I’ve managed is copying-and-pasting Contained Nodes between Materials Editor graphs (including exposed public parameters), which is not robust reuse.
Is there already a Blueprint class that corresponds to the Materials graph?
This Unreal docs page shows exactly the kind of thing I’d like to encapsulate as a reusable Materials Graph blueprint (see example video at the bottom of this page): What is Animating UV Coordinates
Once you create material function and open it, while you don’t have any node selected, you can access the function’s properties in the Details panel, and there you can expose to material function to library making it searchable from any material:
I will have to adapt some things, in some other Macros I was using a Mesh Component Object Reference with Set Scalar Parameter Value on Materials, it seems to work differently when using Material Parameter Collections (nice they can be obtained by a pulldown in a Set Scalar Parameter Value instead of having to type a name in).
@Rawalanche OK, I managed to get some of my cases migrated to use Materials Functions,
they do most of what I need, so I gratefully accept this as the answer.
My excitement about also learning about Material Parameters Collection has been somewhat tempered now I know that changes propagate everywhere, which is useful for some cases (I will use them), but they not exactly what I want for my current cases. Also, when I used one using per- frame events for rotating UV it caused strange artefacts, like a ghosted texture behind the rotating texture.
I did find out how to create regular named Parameters within a Material Function, but not how to expose/publish them. But I found myself still needing to drive them via additional (matching) Blueprint Parameters in an Actor Blueprint (which can be exposed), but that’s tedious, because it means having to define the higher level Blueprint ones (with defaults, range etc.) over and over, and they have to be targeted by String name (not a nice pulldown). Maybe I’m doing something clunky there still, but it worked.
In any case, I am off a running with Material Functions and getting more reuse. Thx!
