Update v2.1 for all Real Materials packs is finished and hope all packages will pass review soon (right now only Complete pack did that).
This update is small & technical - added support for UE 5.5, but more importantly in one of updates for UE 5.4 there was added a new option “Allow variable rate shading”, so now particular material shader can be excluded from VRS pass and thus it can use all advanced material features, based on derivatives (DDX/DDY nodes) that are not compatible with VRS. So, starting from UE5.4 and up there are following changes:
- Main shader (master material) “M_RealMaterials” renamed to “M_RealMaterials_fallback”. It’s still there and it’s still compatible with VRS, so if you need maximum speed or have some issues - this is good backup option.
- Secondary shader “M_RealMaterials_extra”, with extra features like triplanar UV seams dithering and edge effects, now renamed to “M_RealMaterials” and all materials in all packs now using it by default. It will work fine with VRS, just no speed up in rendering from it.
- Edge effects now automatically disabled, when material used on Nanite-enabled mesh, so no need to switch between shaders or create extra copies of same materials, edge effects will be visible only on non-Nanite meshes.
- Also, there are some minor changes on demo maps (enabled 2-bounce for reflections and high quality for transparent materials), a couple of brass materials were tweaked, documentation image for UE5.4 was updated.
Hope those tiny technical improvements can make someone’s life a bit easier XD.