MATERIAL - using a material to distribute numbers around the perimeter of a shape (hexed!!)

Frenetic
Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:24:16 +0000
Asset Creation

Hexes, it’s always hexes.. If I was a Lantern, my color-weakness would be the color-hexes..

I have a hex-based game with the need to put numbers at the corners (or the middle of the sides) to illustrate attack-weights, movement-costs, etc. I have a few ways I thought I could use such things.

Regardless, consider this shape and where the diamonds/stars are might be numbers:

Ideally I’d like to be able to put a number there, but at a minimum of cost as I want to avoid having to keep track of 100’s of hexes worth of decals, etc. To-wit vs using a discreet mesh per number, or a decal, which would be several per-tile, I thought why not just-make-the-material-do-t?? (always my goto-solution the lazy-man’s game..).

That being said I found some useful resources, but don’t have the math-chops to quite pull it together..

Visual Tech Art has an excellent video on scattering that comes close, but it’s gridded vs hexed:

Infinite Non-Repeating details in materials (UE4, valid for UE5)

Is this something that might be doable in UVs when making the mesh? Otherwise, is there anyone out there that might find this problem ‘interesting enough’ to make a pass at it? I can already get text to appear as I want via an Epic tutorial, but I cannot seem to marry the two and add the hexeyness I require..

ref:

Epic Games Developer

Dynamic Text Material Walkthrough | Community tutorial

Breaks down the math and material nodes used to render dynamic number text.

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