Scout Ships: UE5 Shader Breakdown
Inspired by Building the World of 'The Ascent' GDC talk
https://youtu.be/FodXp5BkENk?t=782
It is the same-ish technique Epic used for the Talisman project to meet project size constraints
https://youtu.be/zr3Z60DgZG8?t=2546
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This is my attempt to re-create the the UE shader which uses one texture for all the things in the game. My goal was to avoid normal map baking and using a more procedural approach for texturing. I designed these Scout Ships vehicles based off exploration underwater crafts crossed with a space shuttle. These ships were kit bashed using JROTools mid poly models mainly for speed (I didn't model anything) so that I could focus on the shader side. AO and Curvature map were baked into vertex color to drive dirt and weathering. Primary, secondary, tertiary colors, metal/non metal, emissive are all controlled by UV offset via UDIM. Improvements definitely could be made, some of the weathering is a bit generic but this is a good start for importing a gray model, assigning the shader and getting this result with zero texturing work. Let me know what you think! Always looking for ways for these things to be improved and/or optimized.
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Models were used from the Hard-Surface Kitbash Collection by JROTools.
https://www.artstation.com/jronn/store
Blender Vertex Color Master Addon to bake vertex color and transfer between channels
https://github.com/andyp123/blender_vertex_color_master
Rendered in UE with Lumen.
Different models can use the same material setup while only requiring new vertex color baking and UV offsets for color and metallic.
Adjustable parameters allow for color, roughness, and dirt variations showing the range capabilities of the shader in UE from a lot of weathering and dirt (left) to clean and w/o wear (right)
Isolated individual layer buildup
Neutral lookdev lighting setup with 3 rect lights and a HDRI
Using UDIM for masking in UE. Primary, secondary, tertiary color and metals materials are tagged in Blender then used to offset the UVs
Experimenting on baking AO, curvature and dirt into various channels of the vertex color to drive dirt and grime texture in UE
Material Instance with exposed parameters. Controls for color, gradient, hue shift, dirt, and vertex color intensities
MF_VertexBlend is a Material Function that uses world position to create a hue shift gradient then blends it the Color using the AO and Curvature vertex colors as masks to add on the dirt.
Vertex Color extraction and remapping curvature for mask (top). Tri-planar dirt mask control (left). UDIM masking (bottom right).
Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary colors are blended together using a MF_VertexBlend Material Function (above) to add dirt, edge damage, and a gradient for variations.