Multiple texture for one mesh

Development Rendering
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1

Hi everybody,

I have a question about texturing. I created an ivy mesh, with 2 ID materials : one for branches, and the other for the leafs.

Leaves are just card mesh.

For the leafs, I prepared several textures.

I Wonder if it is possible in the engine to apply those texture (with differents shapes, colors, etc…) in the same material ? Maybe with a random assigment ?
Because, with only 1 texture for the leaves, I find my model too flat and boring…

Thanks in advance for your answers

2

ha, sounds like the ivy generator.
Get your leaf texture, and instead of one leaf… make sure you have a few different variations of the leaf.
Now apply that texture to the leaf-meshes in your 3d program (if its the ivy generator, its prolly 3dsmax) and just divide the uv-islands over the leafs in your texture. this way you have more variation.

you could also apply some noise/coloration depending on world location.

3

you need to do it manually with a uv unwrap modifier.
this is much better than adding multiple materials to the ivy as ue4 will need to recalculate the entire ivy for each material. which… can become quite heavy.

4

You right, it’s ivy generator :slight_smile:

How can I divide UV island ? I don’t understand the process.
I check the roll out menu from ivy gen, and there is a section called leaf mesh, where I can choose the geo I want, but that don’t give me any results, another with vertex color, but I am unable to export the vertex color from max to Unreal.
I also tried to modify the multi material, but all my leaves are changing.

For the project I try to achieve, I found a solution, probably not the best : I convert my Ivy to an editable poly, then I detached ID1 (branch) and ID2(leaf). I export in FBX the branc mesh.
For the leaves, in face sub object, I have done a selection with the random menu, and applied another material.

In this way, I am able to apply different material for leaves in unreal, to make color variation. And for this project, that’s ok, it will do the trick :slight_smile:

You talked about the world location, can you say more about this ? Is it in material editor in UE4, that I can do that ?

5

you are right, overlap uv’s according to the texture.
And since you are doing that with a texture with multiple leafs, you can also create a roughness texture for those multiple leafs.

as for the unwrapping, it might be wise to seperate them for a while while doing the unwrapping :slight_smile:
can always merge them again.

6

Thanks,

I presume I have to overlap my UV’s according to the texture.
I mean about that, all UV for green leaves overlapped in the green leaf texture, all UV for yellow overlapped in the yellow texture, … And so, I get 1 uv set to texture in photoshop for exemple and import in unreal ?
That’s sound great.
I see just 2 problems, but I guess minors :

  • If I want, for exemple, different roughness values for the green and yellow leaves, I need to create some masks to split them in UE4 ?
  • The unwrapping process on max for High res mesh (like ivy generator create) is very difficult (essentially due to the branch wich represent the main polygon count), so is it still Wise to convert in editable polygon, and then split the branch and leaves before apply the UVW unwrap modifier ?
7

Thanks a lot for your support !