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

Changing between seasons quickly with curve atlases


Curve atlases store multiple curves together and allow you to linearly interpolate between them. When used together with material instances, it is possible to create a wide variety of changes within your materials. In this recipe, we will see how we can use this concept to make materials change and reflect different seasons by making use of Blueprints and Material Instance Dynamics.

Getting ready...

This recipe will use the Starter Content that is optionally included in Unreal projects, but you may use any texture of your own.

How to do it...

In order to create a curve atlas, we will need to create some curves to use:

  1. From the Content Browser, right-click and select Miscellaneous | Curve:
  1. From the Pick Curve Class window, select CurveLinearColor and then click on Select:
  1. Give the curve a name (I used SummerCurve) and then double-click on it to open the editor:

In our case, we care about the Curve Gradient Result, which you can see on the bottom...