Hello there! I’m wondering if there is currently way or a plan to implement a way to edit materials on Skeletal Meshes. This is a huge limitation for if you download a character that is rigged, you can’t just directly edit the materials on the mesh. This, of course, means that you have to edit the materials somewhere else and then re-rig the character after the fact. If there IS a way to do this, can you please explain how? If there isn’t a way to edit materials directly, is there a path forward that will add this feature at some point?
Hey there @MADMOVIESINC! I may be misunderstanding the use case, but you can modify the materials of any skeletal mesh without having to re-rig anything. Some reasons you would need to re-rig the model is if you were adding or removing bones, modifying the mesh, or weights.
For example, you can find the material that’s attached to the SKM in it’s details under Material Slots
Then you can find it in the content browser, then modify the material itself, and changes should apply to the SKM when saved. Alternatively you can also replace that material with another you have made.
I am looking to do something more along the lines of “Edit Materials” in the modeling menu. Basically be able to select triangles on the model and edit the material for those triangles. I am looking to select parts of the mesh and add new material slots for said selected area.
While it’s technically possible to mask specific triangles and modify just their material in Unreal, it would have to be a custom and somewhat complex to make, I’d recommend to only go down that path if it’s needed for runtime painting. I agree with Symplex, this would be much easier to accomplish inside of a third party software designed more for modeling or texture/material work.
I guess, that’s kind of my point. lol. I wish Epic would implement this feature, so that isn’t needed. One stop shop. Thank you for the suggestion though. I will go that route. Take care.
Don’t worry, the “One stop shop” is in the cards. Unreal is slowly becoming an all encompassing suite to do a bit of everything, however until it’s complete, programs that focus on each specific aspect will usually be better due to focusing all development time on one specific thing. In the meantime, if you did write an extension to the material suite to make it easier to create fresh textures and a polygon selection mask (baked directly in editor) to material node conversion, the plugin could be rather useful for both your goals and maybe some passive income if you were to post it to Fab.
I’m not at that level. lol. Maybe one day. I was thinking, what if I just convert the Skeletal Mesh into a Static. Then, using the modeling tools to Edit Materials on it, bake it back down into one material. I started working on this option. I haven’t finished yet though. Not sure if it will work.
