Tip: Free Materials in UEFN from Content Library Meshes

[Fresnella]

Hey y’all I wanted to share an art tip I discovered today.

Any creator can easily access thousands (infinite?) of customizable materials in UEFN, by importing assets from the Content Library into your game and repurposing the materials that come with those assets.

The materials show up inside the folder of the Content Library asset. They also show up in the materials search in the Details Panel for meshes. I created a folder to save my favorites.

You can even create Material Instances of those materials, to change the color, rough, metallic or other properties. Then you can use that new altered material on the object it came from, and the UVs will be lined up perfectly. For example you could make a green tree turn autumn orange. Or you can use your new Material Instance on anything you’d like.

There’s soooo much to explore with this feature! If you make something cool, consider replying to this with a pic!

My fave experiment so far is with wroughiron_plate material. I changed the base color to purple and dialed the roughness down to zero.

https://i.gyazo.com/182748a0479ebb1d99e4c94ad9881366.mp4
Also the way I’m testing it on multiple meshes is in the material editor if you scroll down to the bottom of the details you can choose a “Preview Mesh”

[Keawan]

Helpful, thank you!

[Fresnella]

No problem! I really love materials The possibilities are infinite

[yojj47]

This is SO helpful! Must get in and try this.

[Fresnella]

Glad I could help!!! I’ve done a huge deep dive into materials in the weeks since I posted this, so I have a better grasp of how to tweak the Material Instances that come with the Content Library assets. Something to note is that not only can you reuse the whole material for your own assets, you can also grab textures from it, like the base color or normal map. And then you can swap that texture out into any other editable material or material instance instance you’ve got.

This normal map will make the light hit your material in a way that makes it look like it has bumpy brick texture.

Here created a very basic metallic blue brick material using that same normal as a Texture Sample.

This particular brick normal isn’t the best though, because the texture tiling has a weird seam on it because of the shape of the mesh it’s from. You have to test stuff out. Ideally what you want is a texture that tiles seamlessly.

I dunno how familiar you are with material graphs but this tutorial can get you started with basic stuff like color. Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial - How to Create Materials in UE4 - YouTube

lol I changed the UV tiling using the Texture Coordinate node, now it’s a disco ball. I’m so in love with Unreal material graphs.

[RayBenefield]

Ooo these are solid tips and I’m sad I missed this post when you originally posted it. But this looks absolutely amazing.

[Fresnella]

Hey Ray! Thanks! I was dipping into my Core skills - grabbing materials off of objects and reusing them in unexpected ways. I probably won’t use these tips much myself anymore since I shifted to creating all my materials/textures from scratch. But Content Library materials are a good thing for creators to be aware of. Someday I hope to see some standalone customizable materials for creators in the Content Library or elsewhere in UEFN. Is that planned?