Material Texture Seam Issue with Shared: Wrap

Hello!

Engine: UE 5.4.4

Backstory: I am learning materials by creating Earth from NASA’s blue marble images, and for cinematic effect I have converted their 21K texture blocks to 8K blocks that when combined form a 4x2 equirectangular projection of Earth on a sphere.

Issue: When combining these textures, the only way to remove the seam between them is to ensure in each texture setting that the filter method is set to ‘Nearest’ instead of ‘Default (from Texture Group)’ (at least that is the only solution that has worked that I have found). However, I have quickly hit the 16 texture sample limit (day (4x2) + night (4x2) + topography (4x2)), and using Shared: Wrap in the material editor causes the texture seams to appear again as per the description it “gets filter mode from the world texture group”. Since Shared: Wrap is the only solution I have seen for increasing the texture limit…

Question: How can I use ‘Shared: Wrap’ with Filter ‘Nearest’? Is there a way to override or set the filter method from the ‘world texture group’ in the engine for the project so I can update it to use ‘Nearest’? If not is there another way to get around the 16 texture sample limit but still be able to apply color + emissive + specular into a single material using this method of texture combinations?

I have also tried creating material layers and using a material blend… however that did not resolve the 16 texture sample limit.

Texture Settings:

Shared: Wrap (Filter: Default)

Texture Asset (Filter: Nearest)

Any help is appreciated.