Programmatic Rendering

Newbie question…

Here is my goal:
Rendering and saving potentially thousands of realistic still-life images of objects, like cars, for instance.

Consider the car. I wish to add precise levels of rust to a ‘default’ car, from no rust to some maximum level of rust. For each level of rust, I may also wish to add a precise level of scratching, and for each combination of rust and scratches, I may also wish to add some precise level of a third effect, and so on…

Obviously, the combinations of my problem quickly become substantial, and generating the desired images manually is not an option. Hence my question…

“Can I use Unreal Engine to programatically apply rendering as described, and if so, how?”

I appreciate both general and precise answers. If there are documents explaining this exact problem, please let me know.

BigBugBuzz