Hey All!
I’m new to UE4 and still learning it and I’m wondering about a the workflow related to materials and textures I should go for.
I’m modeling and animating my characters in Blender.
My goal is to import full animated key-framed sequences from blender to UE4 + Matinee (not for a game, for pure Cinematic purpose).
Consider what I’ve describe above, what would you recommend me to do:
1 - Should I create all the materials inside Blender or UE4 ?
2 - Based on your experience, Is it easy enough to create materials and textures inside UE4 ?
3 - Can you explain me the workflow order of how I should start, I’m a bit confused because it’s new to me.
I’m still watching video tutorials related to materials in UE4 in order to learn how it works,
BUT I’m interested in your opinions, recommendations and suggestions from your own experience.
1 - Unless you feel extremely inclined towards using Blender, I’d say UE4. The material editor is pretty straightforward, there’s just a lot of content, but the main concepts are easy to grasp.
2 - Textures, really easy. Materials can be easy or hard depending on what you’re creating. A simple glowing material will be much easier than creating seawater :3
3 - Well, you already said you’re looking at videos, and there’s not really much to it. I guess this helps a bit Best thing to do in my opinion is to open content examples and run through it, and look at pre-made materials and try to understand how they work. Change values and textures around, remove and add certain nodes, and experimenting is the best way to learn
paragonx9: Thank you very much for your detailed reply!
Your answers encouraged me to continue dig in and explore (I’m still a bit scared from the nodes concept).
Preparing my models before creating the materials inside UE4:
How would you suggest me to work from Blender, I mean… do I focus only on the modeling, UV mapping, rigging, animation and IGNORE the all materials procedure in Blender, and than create materials in UE4 and drop them on the imported characters?
Also, if I make vertex groups with names inside Blender to prepare different areas to put materials and textures on a single mesh.
Will UE4 support this workflow and I’ll be able to drop the materials on the selected areas?
or I’m not even close to how it works…
I will keep watching video tutorials of course but I’m just guessing for now because of my curiosity and in case the video tutorials won’t cover this part.
Thanks ahead for any information related to my weird questions.
You can assign special parts of your material to vertex groups, but when you want to assign multiple materials use material slots (but dont use too many materials -> draw calls)
vertex groups:
material slot:
Best thing to do in my opinion is to open content examples and run through it, and look at pre-made materials and try to understand how they work. Change values and textures around, remove and add certain nodes, and experimenting is the best way to learn 
