Week 8 is about materials and bringing textures into Unreal. I already had my mesh imported into Unreal, so all I had to do was import all the textures I’d made into the content browser.
First of all I tackled file organisation to make sure my workspace was manageable and easily accessible for finding items. This is the file structure that was also required to push my shop onto the group project so this would save me time in the future when I was at that stage.
I then imported all of my textures into Unreal, using the standard name convention for textures (T_), grouping them together by name. At this point I also ensured that I didn’t import any texture maps that were empty such as emission, height and metallic, depending on the texture. Here is how my textures folder looks:
From these textures I then started to create materials which combine the texture maps to create one material that I can apply to my mesh. Here’s an example of a basic material setup, using my M_Steps asset:
Here you can see the base colour map is plugged to base colour, roughness map plugged to roughness and normal map plugged to normal. Some of my materials ended up being slightly more complex than this, especially when I wanted to alter aspects such as the base colour of a material. For example, you can see here with my M_RidgeTiles material that I changed the base colour from what it originally was in Substance Painter using a Constant 3Vector, allowing me to assign an RGB value as the base.
For my M_RoofTiles material, I experimented with the material graph quite a bit. For both of my tiling textures I had to use the TexCoord node to adjust the UV scaling to an proportionate amount, otherwise I would have massive bricks and massive tiles. This ahd to be input into all the texture maps. You can then see at the segment of the graph that I manipulated the base colour of the roof using hue shift and desaturation nodes with editable parameters plugged into them. This was so I could play around with the colour of the roof as I felt black/grey was too harsh of a colour for the desired vibe of my shop.
In order to add further flexibility to materials with parameter values, I created material instances which allow material parameters to be edited in real time. This was useful for my roof tiles so I could made quick decisions and curate the colour I desired. The image below is a screenshot of the material details of the instance of M_RoofTiles:
Material instances were discussed in the tutorial I mentioned in my previous post about how to create windowpane textures (FastTrack Tutorials, 2021), therefore that video alongside the mural on learning space for Week 8 helped me understand how to utilise these.
Once I had imported the majority of my textures into Unreal, I reassessed the colour scheme I was using with my shop.
This is a screenshot taken before I changed around the colour of the tiles - the shop looks extremely gothic, unlike the vision I had for a more cutesy looking shop. Therefore I swapped out my bricks to an off white shade, using instances. I also decided once all the textures had been applied that the bricked up windows didn't aesthetically fit the building - the large rest area of texture confuses the eyes and doesn't appeal, so I tried out duplicating the windows to replace where the bricks would be. This would later require me to go back into Maya and adjust the geometry of the base so there was a space for the bottom windows to slot into, but it didn't take too long, especially using Unreal's 'reimport' feature.
This is how my shop looked once I imported the teapot and teacup textures. I decided to colour the bottom window frames the same cream colour as the bricks surrounding the window as to not take the attention away from the sign.
Then came the addition of the ivy mesh and material, with a couple of trials as to how the ivy should be laid out. I decided on the fuller ivy (3rd image) but not covering the top of the front of the shop despite my original plan as I wanted the focus to be on the signs, not as much the ivy at that point.
Then, finally, I adjusted the colour of the roof tiles as mentioned at the start of this blog post. It definitley brought the shop to life in comparison to the draining black slate, especially with the flecks of green embedded in the roof texture.
Now I'm ready to go into Week 9 and set up the lighting for my final renders!
References:
FastTrack Tutorials (2021) Creating fake glass in substance 3D painter, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2Yzfh_AKtY&t=637s (Accessed: 8 March 2023).
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