In Chapter 2, Creating Your First Level, we selected a walnut polished material and applied it to the ground. This changed the simple dull ground into a brown polished wood floor. Using materials, we are able to change the look and feel of the objects.
The reason for a short introduction of materials here is because it is a concept that we need to have learned about before we can construct a Static Mesh. We already know that we need Static Meshes in the game and we cannot only rely on the limited selection that we have in the default map package. We will need to know how to create our own Static Meshes, and we rely heavily on Materials to give the Static Meshes their look and feel.
So, when do we apply Materials while creating our custom Static Mesh? Materials are applied to the Static Mesh during its creation process outside the editor, which we will cover in a later section of this chapter. For now, let us first learn how Materials are constructed in the editor.