I have read that you all are planning on improving material layer support for substrate materials.
I am currently working on a complex terrain prop material, which will use 3 materials, and I am finding that it would be extremely easy to setup if Material Layers were actually substrate layers and Material Blends were Substrate Blends.
I don’t know that you can combine the two, or add Substrate inputs/outputs to existing Material Layers inputs/outputs. Seems to me it would be easiest and best to just create a separate/new substrate layers and substrate blends.
With what I am currently working on, I would like to create 3 substrates, and create different blends for each. For example, I will have a base substrate, dirt/grime substrate that will blend using a Crevice/AO map of the static mesh geometry, and then add a sand (or sediment) substrate that will be masked using a combo of the crevice/ao mask, world Z height mask and a world normals mask to apply the sand in crevices and on up facing normals.
I want to be able in material instance, to choose which substrate I am using for each layer, so that I can not only choose different textures, but also having different shaders (the dirt/grime would be a different shader/material setup than the sand.
As of now, if I use material layers and blends, I am not sure how to utilize the substrate blends in a material layer blend? I am currntly working on this and will update asI learn more about trying to implement substrate blends and layers in material layers and blends. As of right now, not being able to use Substrate blends in a material layer blend makes this impossible yes/no?
I could pass Substrate attribute values (such as f0 and f90) through arbitrary nodes that support same value types and ranges, but then in a material layer blend, I do not know how I would utilize a substrate blend? Again, brings me back to it seems you might as well create a whole new layer and layer blend system specifically fr substrate?