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

Using decals to add granularity to our scenes


Decals are a great thing as they allow us to project certain materials into the world. This opens up multiple possibilities for us, like having greater control over where we place certain textures or the ability to add variety to multiple surfaces without complicating our material graphs. They are also useful in a visual way, as they allow us to see certain changes without the need to move back and forward between the material editor and the main scene. Furthermore, Unreal has recently introduced a new type of decal that allows not only for planar projections but also mesh-based ones, which can be really useful whenever we want to project something into a non planar surface—as we are about to see. So without further ado, let's jump right into it and see what this is all about!

Getting ready

Just like we mentioned at the beginning of this recipe, we'll be making use of both the standard decals that Unreal has included since it launched and the new...