Video tutorial
One-click material creation from AmbientCG
Following the success of my AmbientCG Blender extension (5 stars / 19K downloads, thanks internet!), I made the equivalent tool for Unreal Engine.
This plugin works by specifying the material ID and the resolution, and it then takes care of:
Downloading and unzipping the corresponding material image files from AmbientCG
Managing a disk cache of all downloaded materials image files
Importing the image files into texture assets
Creating a material instance that optionally supports texture bombing
Turning a 5 minute repetitive process into 5 seconds :)
Installation
At this time, only Windows is supported, but Mac and Linux support is in active development.
Download the plugin files and move the `AmbientCG` folder either in the global plugin directory to make it available for all projects of a specific UE version (for example `C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.7\Engine\Plugins\AmbientCG`) or into a local plugin directory to make it available only for a specific UE project (for example `C:/Users/me/Desktop/MyGame/Plugins/AmbientCG`)
Open an UE project where the plugin is installed
Open the tab with `Window > AmbientCG`
Specify the material ID (for example, `Wood051` for https://ambientcg.com/view?id=Wood051) and its resolution, and click on "Create material"
This will keep create the corresponding textures and materials in your `Content/AmbientCG` folder, as well as keep a cache of all texture images in the `C:/Users/YOUR_NAME/.cache/ambientcg` folder
The material instances support:
Tile sampling when the `Bombing Enable` parameter is 0
Texture bombing when the `Bombing Enable` parameter is 1, in which case the `Offset` and `Tiling` parameter define it
Displacement through the override of the related material properties