PBR!

First week back and I'm quickly flung into PBR (physical based materials). We were given a simple project to create a variety of different materials in Unreal Engine 4 and adding them to premade objects, this included materials from leather to gold. It was a great way to get accustomed to UE4 as I had only previously used a much older and almost impossible version to use.

Immediately my fears of being unable to use Cry Engine this year were quickly silenced as I found the interface much simpler and easier to use than it old counterpart. Furthermore, thank god for no longer needing packages!

Metallic is also a new feature which can be used in place of specularity. Using a mask to indicate where materials are metallic and not, the engine replicates a metallic look to your material in the areas you indicate. Also instead of a gloss map it now uses a roughness map which determines how rough and reflective a material is, with white being rough and black being smooth.

Another thing I love about the material editor is how much you can customize settings. The colours can be completely customized, and you can create flat colour diffuses in engine and that is just the start. One of the things that amazes me was that you could adjust the materials opacity and how light reacted with it and penetrated it, this helped me create a realistic Wax effect.

Overall I was pleased with my outcomes, yet there is so much more to learn and understand in UE4. I think I will try and learn more about adding motion and extra effects to my materials and learning about other basic options that can be used to enhance my materials.