UE _Materials

1. Core Concepts

• Material Inputs: Base Color, Metallic, Roughness, Normal, Emissive, Opacity
• PBR Workflow: Realism is based on physical rules, not arbitrary brightness adjustments
• Material vs Material Instance:
  → The master material defines the structure, while instances are used for parameter tweaking (very important)

2. Commonly Used Nodes

• Value Nodes: Constant (1/2/3/4), Scalar Parameter, Vector Parameter
• Math Nodes: Add, Multiply, Lerp, Clamp
• Texture Nodes: Texture Sample, Texture Coordinate
• Normal Nodes: Normal Map, Flatten Normal
• Control Nodes: If, Switch, Fresnel

3. Textures and Channels

• Base Color: Albedo / color information
• Normal: Surface detail
• ORM / RMA Maps:
  • R = Ambient Occlusion
  • G = Roughness
  • B = Metallic
• sRGB Settings: Knowing when to enable or disable sRGB is crucial