Book Image

Unreal Engine 4 Shaders and Effects Cookbook

By : Brais Brenlla Ramos, John P. Doran
Book Image

Unreal Engine 4 Shaders and Effects Cookbook

By: Brais Brenlla Ramos, John P. Doran

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!
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Achieving realistic reflections


Reflections are a very interesting and powerful effect, and one that can often make or break a scene. They are amazing when used to their full potential, since their inclusion alone adds a layer of realism that can be difficult to fake. So far, we've made use of two reflection methods in the previous recipes: the standard Screen Space Reflections that is enabled by default in the engine, and the Reflection Captures we've always had around in our scenes. Even though we only set them up in the Chapter 1, Physically Based Rendering, both of these methods have been implemented in the scenes we have provided.

With that covered, it is now time to deal with other additional reflection techniques that can enhance the look of our models even further, such as Planar Reflections. The methods we've used so far have worked great with the assets that we were dealing with, but some of the materials that we are going to be exploring in the immediate future will benefit from...