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Unreal Engine 4 Shaders and Effects Cookbook

By : Brais Brenlla Ramos, John P. Doran

3.6 (5)

Buy this Book

Unreal Engine 4 Shaders and Effects Cookbook

3.6 (5)

By: Brais Brenlla Ramos, John P. Doran

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine 4 is a powerful game engine, one which has seen a recent boost in widespread adoption thanks to its ease of use and the powerful rendering pipeline that it packs. Seeing as how it's relatively easy to create stunning presentations and visuals, Unreal has quickly become a strong contender in industries where this kind of software had been previously denied entry. With that in mind, this book aims to help you get the most out of Unreal Engine 4 - from creating awe-inspiring graphics to delivering optimized experiences to your users. This is possible thanks to a mixture of hands-on experience with real materials and the theory behind them. You will immediately know how to create that material that you want to display, and you'll also end up with the knowledge that will let you know how to control it. All of this will be done without losing sight of two key components of any real-time application - optimization, and efficiency. The materials that you create will be light and efficient, and they will vary depending on your target platform. You'll know which techniques can be used in any kind of device and which ones should be kept to high-end machines, giving you the confidence to tackle any material-related task that you can imagine. Hop onboard and discover how!

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

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Free Chapter

Physically Based Rendering

Introduction

Setting up a studio scene

Working inside the material editor

Our first physically based material

Creating some simple glass with the translucent blend mode

Lighting our scene with image-based lighting

Checking the cost of our materials

Post-Processing Effects

Introduction

Using a post-process volume

Changing the mood of a scene through color grading

Setting up a cinematic shot using depth of field

Applying cinematic effects to our games

Mimicking a real-life camera using Bloom and Lens Flares

A horror movie pulsating effect with post process materials

Adjusting anti aliasing and other rendering features

Opaque Materials and Texture Mapping

Introduction

Using masks within a material

Instancing a material

Texturing a small prop

A plastic cloth using Fresnel and detail texturing

Creating a semi procedural material

Baking out a material

Distance-based texture blending

Translucent Materials and More

Introduction

Creating a candle material with SSS

Setting up a truly transparent glass

A different type of translucency – holograms

Achieving realistic reflections

Mastering refraction by creating a pool water material

Water caustics

Animating a sea shader

Beyond Traditional Material Uses

Introduction

Using an emissive material to light the scene

Playing a video from the internet on a screen

Creating a CCTV camera feed

Highlighting interactive elements within our game

Creating a game compass

Creating a mini map

Advanced Material Techniques

Introduction

Painting a mesh with vertex painting

Using decals to add granularity to our scenes

Creating a brick wall with Parallax Occlusion Mapping

A brick wall using displacement

Proximity-based masking with mesh distance fields

Using Material Instances

Introduction

Creating snow on top of objects using layered materials

Changing from a sunny scene to a snowy one through parameter collection

Changing between seasons quickly with curve atlases

Blending landscape materials

Customizing UVs

Mobile Shaders and Material Optimization

Introduction

Creating materials for mobile platforms

Using the forward shading renderer for VR

Optimizing through texture atlases

Baking a 3D model material into a texture

Combining multiple meshes with the HLOD tool

General material-optimization techniques

Some Extra Useful Nodes

Introduction

Adding randomness to identical models

Adding dirt to occluded areas

Matching texture coordinates across multiple meshes

Adjusting material complexity through quality switches

Using interior cubemaps to texture the interior of a building

Using fully procedural noise patterns

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Physically Based Rendering

Welcome to the first chapter of the book! In the next few pages, we are going to start looking at how to set up a scene in Unreal for visualization purposes—we want to make sure that we nail this first part down before we move any further. Beginner or advanced, no matter what type of user you are, we'll need to make sure to take a look at some of the most critical elements that can make or break a scene in Unreal. Things like taking advantage of the right type of lighting, knowing where to look for the most common material parameters, or learning to measure the impact in performance that the shaders have are vital in any project. With that in mind, we are going to be learning about the following topics: