12 layers of vert paint? Fantastic! I have only been able to achieve 4 so far. Do you by chance use a height map input to get more realistic blending for things like bricks, tiles, rock, etc?
Yes. probably in the third series we will go over parallax, par occlusion, and distance based displacement tesselation. We will get lots of use out of vert painting by dividing color ranges.
So wait, what’s the difference between parallax and par occlusion? I know that POM is supposed to be much better than standard parallax, but I didn’t know it was possible in UE4. Have you discovered a way to do it?
just puchased the first vid! been looking for a tutorial series like this for a while now for unreal 4. thanks so much, cant wait for vid 2!
Awesome! Vid two will def be out this weekend! Including the water puddle vert paint par! 
I have a bit of a fundamental question regarding master materials, as I tend to dislike fiddling with values: what are the benefits of using a master material such as this? As in, what kind of parameters do you find need tweaking per-material, that can’t be done through the typical Albedo/Normal/Roughness maps?
Unlimited amount of tweaking, that’s the main benefit. You can still use the traditional texture maps in the master material too. You also have the benefit of less draw calls because you are using the instances of the same material instead of having hundreds of separate materials for everything in your game.
I purchased your tutorial and was really impressed with it. The level of explanation was fantastic and I look forward to the next series. Thanks for taking the time to makes these.
I Purchased the tutorial and have to say thanks for the really great work, all the basics are here, very well explained.
I’m looking forward to the next series. Really worth buying !!!
Thanks! I am producing the final videos for the water puddle series as I type this. Should be available for purchase within an hour or so. I will post the teaser here! Thanks again for the support and let me know if you ever have any questions or requests for new videos!
Thanks a ton! I really appreciate the support!
Hello everyone! New videos are online! Check them out at the top of this page!
New tutorial is great! Many applications for it. I will likely use it for frost and ice too. I really enjoyed the bit about splitting the vertex color channels. Really useful! I added it all to my custom master material based on the first tutorial set.
What do you have planned now?
Awesome tut, very cool techniques for vert painting
There’s one thing I disagree with though - you have the roughness fresnel reversed. It should be rougher (higher roughness) when the surface is perpendicular to your angle of view and more glossy (lower roughness) as the viewing angle approaches parallel.
To check it out, just take any slightly matte object you have at hand an look at it against a bright light. As you rotate it in your hand from perpendicular to parallel to your line of sight, you should see that the reflection becomes stronger and sharper. Also, the water itself shouldn’t have this effect at all, since it has no roughness at all (except if you hit it with ultrasound or something) Only the wet brick areas should have the roughness fresnel.
I’ve spent a lot of time working with shaders, so this is something that kind of irked me.
Great job otherwise!
Any news on future tutorials?
Aaron, great tutorial. VERY helpful.
One question. Is it possible to add physical materials to each of the layers being painted here? Ultimately, I’d like to add a splash decal only as my player walks through a puddle. I know how to assign each material to a physical material, but is it possible to have multiple based on painted vertex data?
Thanks
I would like also like to know whether it’s possible to link different physical materials to the painted vertex data.