FMP: Materials 1

Materials are pretty important, and there are job roles purely as texture artists.  Currently the taught standard is with three main map types, diffuse, specular, and normal.  Recently Marmoset 2 gives everyone access to physically based rendering, which is important and looks spiffing.  UDK shaders can be quite complicated and technical, and is the final destination for my project materials.

Workflow wise I have been using nDo2 a lot in Photoshop and Zbrush to get nice map sets.

Below is a default brick material in Marmoset 2 - I had a look to see how it works so I can emulate & understand them a bit.  It's probably an idea embed the greyscale maps into the alpha channel of TGAs for standardising my textures.  Is nice to have some kind of map to use for blending 

Sample material "Quixel Brick" from Marmoset 2

JPEGS    size (px)

_ao	512
_d	1024
_g	512
_h	256
_n	1024
_s	1024

Sample material from Marmoset

Gravestone at Welford Cemetary

Material created from photo

UDK Landscape Material

Here is my basic landscape material setup - I'm happy with it for now

To use the landscape functionality in UDK you obviously need to have the appropriate textures - Grass if you want grass, cliff if you want cliff features.

Here I am landscaping in UDK, using the brush to sculpt the form and also to paint different materials.

I'm impressed with the variation and control you get from using the landscape tool.  In the above picture I am combining two types of contrasting rock texture (large and smaller forms), grass, and a "border" material (which is organic noise I made from the above gravestone material).  I'm quite happy with the varaition - keeping in mind that there will be rocks and foliage on top of this.

Combining different texture density (and normal height contrast) materials can help add interest and variation - tools to guide the player