Moss for Unreal

Engine
 Table of Contents Introduction
Reference Hunting Unreal Engine In this little tutorial we will be taking a look at how we can make a
Moss material using Substance Designer and then making it look
good with some simple shader magic inside of Unreal Engine. This
References? In-engine setup
Tutorial will not be going super deep in all the different aspects as
01 Introduction 5 01 Testing the output of the Substance 19 some of them might be simple to setup for yourself with some
easy to find tutorials or explanations from the Unreal Engine Wiki
02 Using Megascans as a base 5 02 The master material and parameters 19 or other sources.
03 Parallax occlusion mapping node 19
Substance Designer Hopefully this short but sweet little tutorial will help you make
04 Fuzzy shading node 19 your own moss for your environments.
Get started in Substance 05 Master material overview 20

01 Getting started in substance 7 06 Tweaking the values 20

02 Starting with a Graph template 7

03 Create the base structure 7
04 Focus on the Heightmap 7
05 Taking your time to get familiar 8
06 Additive or subtractive work 8
07 Exporting to SBSAR 8

Building the main shape

01 Using shape node 9
02 Smoothen the base out 9
03 Implementing the falloff 9 Who am I?
04 Adding a subtle warp 9 I’m Timothy Dries,
Adding moss strands Environment artist with multiple years of experience working on
01 Adding side branches 10 multiple games and my real passion is building and thinking
about making my own worlds/environments.
02 Testing the texture 10
As things on the side I have also been running a weekly blog with
Making more shape variations tips and tricks about environment art for almost a year now which
is where I express one of my other things I love to do, this being
01 Directional warping 11 helping other people and chasing financial freedom in this weird
02 Vector warps and Circular Splatters 11 combination. This also leads me to make some tutorials from time
to time as a more long form explanation of some of the aspects of
03 Adding some handmade tweaks 11 environment art.
Tile sampler setup
So if you are looking for some of the other stuff that I do, please
01 Different tile samplers 12 connect with me on any of the following platforms or check out
my blog!
03 Combining the different tile samplers 13
01 Spheroid base sections 14
02 Vector map usage 14
03 Rotation map
04 Masks for different moss sections
14
14
Connect with me
Additional maps Artstation Blog

01 Basecolor gradient maps 15 Gumroad Store

02 Emmisive output 16
Unreal Engine Marketplace
03 Roughness setup 16
04 Normal map output 16 @DriesTimothy
05 Height output 16 TimothyDries
06 Ambient Occlusion output 17
07 Exporting as SBSAR 17 Tip!
08 Exporting as normal textures 17
You can click the page number right next
to the different sections to jump to that
specific section on that page number.

2 3
Moss for Unreal Engine | Reference Hunting Moss for Unreal Engine | Reference Hunting Moss for Unreal Engine

References?
01 Introduction 02 Using Megascans as a base
Reference hunting and using them is a big part of creating a The best example to get closer to more realistic result is using
believable materials, you might have gotten bored of sections like Megascans or other forms of scanned data that give us insight into
this one by now from other tutorials but this is because a lot of the values of the different textures and how they are composed,
people are trying to hammer this into your mind. There is a good this will give you a batter indication on how to build a good
reason for that, if you get good references, then this will help you roughness or height map for your textures. Additionally you can
get close to the proportions, details and other important elements also have a look at other people's work to get even more insight
of that specific prop, environment or in this case, material. into how they have setup their individual maps.

It’s important to take a step back and see what we need out of the
reference, so I was specifically looking for the different shapes that
moss has and trying to find closeup views that really show the
smaller details of the individual moss strands, this will make a nice
base for the moss wall that I was looking to create. Other than that
I was also looking for the main shapes for the individual chunks of

Reference
moss that you can typically see on those moss walls.

01 Hunting
Megascans reference - Roughness Megascans reference - Basecolor

5
 Moss for Unreal Engine | Substance Designer
04 Focus on the Heightmap
Get started in Substance
When building the material you want to start out with the
01 Getting started in substance heightmap, because you are going to build up all the masks and
information you might need for all the other texture maps.
This can probably be the most daunting thing if you haven't
worked with substance designer or any node based editor before. So start building the height first and then looking how we can get
But don't worry about it, take your time to do some research, the other textures from this texture. This allows us not to get
watch some of the introduction videos that allegoritmic does, they distracted by all the other stuff happening in substance designer,
help a ton to get you up to speed. This is also the reason why for this moment we will add some
placeholder colors to Metallic, roughness and Basecolor, these
We wont be doing a deep dive into all the information that you should be changed to your personal preference though, we do this
need for a fresh start in substance designer so this will require so we can visualize the texture maps properly and if we do this with
some former knowledge. Hopefully what I will do in this little the same setting every time this will help you even more to focus on
tutorial is give you some additional insight in some of the other the heightmap first.
things you can do to make your life in Substance Designer a bit
easier too.

02 Starting with a Graph template

Upon opening the program you will be greeted by a large blank
canvas, the biggest fear of starting something new. But no need to
worry! There are some standard templates available to help get
you started with a setup that is has all the essential nodes for your
connections. For most of the cases we will be looking at using the
"Physically Based (Metallic/Roughness)" for Unreal Engine and
the "Specular/Glossiness" if you want to use your textures inside
Unity or CryEngine.

03 Create the base structure

There is another option if “… Focus on the
you don't want to get
started with one of the
heightmap first, all the
base structures you can other textures come
always build your own from that single one ...”
personal node setup too.

First let’s see if we can add a base layout to get you started. For this
we need to have a look at setting up a base template like the one
we have below. Keep in mind that this is just an example of the
setup you can make, and is meant to serve as a good starting point.
Then for the maps we will be using this being Height, Normal and
Ambient Occlusion we connect everything to a levels node which
will act as a reroute node for us to attach all the other nodes to.

When setting up an "Output" node for the material we need to

make sure to tag all of them properly, Especially the "Identifier"
for the name and "Usage" where we need to define how it will
export the different channels, for example a basecolor would be
"RGB" but if we want to add additional information into the Alpha
channel we need to make this a "RGBA".

Substance
#02
Tip! #01

02 Designer
Select the connection between two nodes
#01 and press “Space” to open a menu
which will allow you to search for nodes
#02 and will then add them as a node on
the connection you have just selected #03.

This will greatly increase the speed of

building materials.
#03

7
 Moss for Unreal Engine Moss for Unreal Engine| Substance Designer
05 Taking your time to get familiar
As mentioned before this tutorial will not go into all of the details
Tip!
on how to get started when creating materials, so I’m making the
assumption that you already have a base knowledge of the Create a new template:
program itself.
#01 Create a new substance designer file
with the correct outputs (found in the
The main thing you need to get used to is taking your time to
properly get started with the program, the way you blend stuff
nodes menu) and save this file In a #03
together and all the other things that comes with it. However, we location where you want to store it.
are going to look into some tips and tricks that will help you create #02 Link to the folder within the substance
better and more optimized materials as well as speed up your graph directory by going to Preferences > #04
workflow. Projects > General > Substance Templates.
#03 Now when you create a new material
06 Additive or subtractive work the template will be available to add from #01
a list.
The most important thing to
keep in mind when starting “… Try and see your #02
out with substance designer is #01
the manner in which you
material as you
work, either you work in a way would see a sculpt,
that you start with the you need to build it
minimum amount of height up layer by layer ...”
and then start adding layer on
top of it (Additive) or the other
way around, which is probably less used Is working in a way where
you start with the maximum height and that subtracting layer from
the main layer. Most people will use the additive way of working as
it might be the easiest way to get into this.

07 Exporting to SBSAR
This is where the power comes in with exporting materials to your
game engine, this type of format will allow you to use all the
parameters of the procedural nature of the material creation and
create quick variations or do minor adjustments on the material
without going back into substance designer.

For this we need to look at how the exporting is setup. So

Building the main shape
remember all the output node setup? This is the place where all Now, let’s dive into the first section of the actual material creation. 02 Smoothen the base out
these different things come together, so it will take all the output This first section is all about the creation of a single leaf of moss like
nodes and will compile them in a certain way to export. These then we discussed in the reference gathering section. The reason why I
Next up I use the non uniform blur to blur it according to the
get stored in the presets of the exporter, so for example the Unreal choose to create a leaf of moss is because just combining noises
texture that we feed it, in this case the “cells 1” pattern will give
Engine exporter will then export all the different output node into something that would fit the feeling of moss would not work
some small edge inconsistencies to make the shape feel a little
results and then will get output as texture maps. We can also do #02 for this one, the reason why moss looks like moss is because all of
more fuzzy, then let’s subtlety add some additional blur to
some other stuff as channel packing the textures or even make our the smaller details in the texture itself, so replicating that as close
smooth the shapes together once more. And lastly we add the
own preset if we want something custom. as possible is the best way to achieve a real feeling and looking
“Auto Levels” this is a great and important node that will balance
moss texture.
the black and white values for you instead of you using a “levels”
node and balancing the values yourself.
01 Using shape node
03 Implementing the falloff
Using the shape node and mixing this with some really subtle edge
differences, which are really going to help the fuzzy feel of the
Now that we smoothed out the base shape, it’s time to implement
moss.
the gradient that goes from black to white the more it goes up. This
will cause the shape to be adding nothing/almost nothing at the
The shape node is amazing for the amount of things you can base to adding it’s full shape of the top section to the height map
achieve with it, for example for this one I used the “brick” pattern
with a super low “X” size
#03 and a less than 1 “Y” size,
04 Adding a subtle warp
because I wanted a shape “… make sure that the
that was slim and didn’t shape looks natural Now as a final addition to this section, we will have a look at adding
touch the edges so I could from the start, having a subtle warp to the shape itself, the reason for doing so is to make
add some blur’s and other straightness kills the sure that the shape looks natural from the start, and having a
things on top of them, if natural feel of the straightness in any shape kills the natural feel of the material. Keep
you have a shape that goes in mind that adding things like these need to be added subtly, if
to the edge and then you material ...” you are adding a lot of distortion to the shape already then you are
add a blur on top it will cut or bleed into the outer edges of the going to have big issues with adjusting this later down the line.
space and cause seam issues.

8 9
 Moss for Unreal Engine | Substance Designer Moss for Unreal Engine | Substance Designer

Adding moss strands

So now that we have established the main shape it’s time to start #03 #04
adding some of our initial details to them. Because if we look back
to our References we can see that the moss has some tiny little #03
branches coming form the side, so in the next step we will have a
look on how to add these.

01 Adding side branches #01

So we want to get that “It’s all about giving

fluffy feeling of moss to
happen on our texture
the right impression, for
then we need to add moss we are looking for #01
additional side branches that fuzzy feeling ...”
that give the impression to
make them more fuzzy.

For this we use the same texture as the main branch and throw it
into a “transformation 2D”, this allows us to transform whatever
we use an the input, in this we can scale,move and rotate the shape
we give it to using the 2D preview screen and use the box do do the
transformation. #02

02 Testing the texture

Additionally, is you want to test how it looks scattered around a
bunch of times then you can always add this shape as an input into
a tile sampler and up the “X” and “Y” values to something
reasonable, for example 200 or something. Now that we have set
this up we can have a look at a test sample of the amount of little
moss sections.

Tip! Making more shape variations

You can preview the final changes of Now that we a solid base, it’s time to add some additional changes 03 Adding some handmade tweaks
nodes that you are adjusting by double- to each and every one of them that we are going to use it as input
clicking on the the node you want to for the tile samplers going forward. This section will go over some This is something that was personal for me to add and it also shows
preview #01(this will change the 2D of these additions to give the different shapes some needed off the most simple way that we can add a more unique touch using
preview to this node) and then single-click variety. simple transformations and then combine them all with blends.
on the node you will be adjusting. #02 The reason why this is not a good way to do stuff though, is that
(Switch to this node without preview) 01 Directional warping because you are adding manual adjustments, so when you try to
add some variation or adjust this in any way you will have to do
So we want to make the shapes that we are going to use a bit more hand editing, which sort of takes away from the goal of working
unique, so for the first option here we will be using a Directional within a procedural tool.
warp, but before that we will do some adjustments for one of these
shapes. Instead of using the normal shape we will make a fuzzy That being said, for something so small as this doing it in this
#02 #01
version for that. To make the fuzzy version we will use an edge manner will get the job done nonetheless.
detect that we are going to invert and then blur it up a bit. My
intention with this is taking the shape that we had and making it a
full black and white map that we can then use to blur it again to get
some fuzziness back.

We can then add our directional warp to change it up even more

than all the other shapes do currently.

02 Vector warps and Circular Splatters

#03
Another two nodes that are super nice to use, so let’s dive into
them! First up the Vector Warps, this is basically the same as a
directional warp but it uses a vector map as the input. What a
vector map does is it will offset the pixels on the texture according
to the normal map that you feed it. This is basically the same as
what you get from the direction warp in the previous section. We
can then control the Intensity of this said offset with the intensity
within the node itself.

10 11
 Moss for Unreal Engine | Substance Designer Moss for Unreal Engine | Substance Designer
03 Combining the different tile samplers
Tile sampler setup
Now that we have the different tile samplers setup, we will have to
This is the probably the sections where the most stuff happens go back to before the tile samplers if we want to build up the masks
even though it's only a single node that holds all the fun, in this to generate the separate sections of moss. To start out we will need
#01
section we will be looking at the tile sampler node, one of the more the Spheroid base mask that we generated in the section before
powerful nodes if you are thinking about spreading a lot of things this one and try to turn that in a mask that we can use to generate
around on texture. the random patches of moss.
01 Different tile samplers For these masks I used the “The floodfill node is
flood fill method, so that this super powerfull and
Now that we have prepared all “… Tile samplers are does is that it will take a mask
the different shapes that we
the bread and and will fill it with a fill that will can be used for a
will be using for the tile allow us to perform different lot of applications, I
samplers we will have a look on butter of most of my operations on this mask. the still need to figure
how to set them up. So let’s materials, this node way that this works in this case out more myself...”
connect the first shape to the is so fun to play is that I will turn this Spheroid
first tile sampler and get to around with ...” base mask into a flat black and white mask with an edge detect set
work! Probably the first thing to a low value. We then use a flood fill to generate the initial step
you notice is that it’s not picking up the shape and it’s still and then use a flood fill to Random colors, this will give us exactly
displaying the base shape. We can change this in the “Pattern” what we need to generate the different masks with the following
section of the tile sampler and set this to “pattern input”. There section.
are a lot of other shapes that we can use to preview the spread and
amount of the sampler if we aren’t using our own shape yet. So now that we have the randomized gradient we need to extract
the different sections another node called a Histogram select, this
Now when it comes to the important settings there are a TON of will scan the values in a texture and will then include them in the
different options within this node, which is also why it makes it one mask if they are in "range" of a "position" on the black and white
of my favorite nodes to use and listing them all below would be a scale. All we need to do now is turn up the contrast to 1 to fully get
little awkward as you can just look them up in the official a black and white mask.
documentation anyways. So what I would suggest is that you play
around with all the settings yourself and see what is the most We can then use the first “There are multiple
useful for yourself. histogram select for the first
tile sampler, a subtraction of ways of getting
02 Tile sampler options the first histogram scan from these masks and
the second one and for the blending them
Some of the basics to just get started are the amount of shapes we third one we use a combination together, make sure
want to spawn, controlling both the X and Y amount with the #01 of the first and second to experiment...”
parameters with the same name. As mentioned before we can histogram scan and subtract
change the shape with the “Pattern” dropdown menu, we can that from the third histogram scan.
also add multiple of these custom shapes by adjusting the
“Pattern Input Number”. Some of the other more basic options as Then finally we can just add them together into one nice mask by
seen in picture #01 are things like changing the “size”, “Random just adding the different sections on top of each other with some
Size”, “Scale”, “Scale Random”, etc... But these kind of speak for blend nodes set to “Add”. Then to finish it off we can just add an
themselves and are just fun to play around with when testing “Auto levels” node to adjust some of the levels and balance them
things for yourself. some more.

#02 shows another fun one to use if the “Mask random” this neat
little option allows you to create some randomness within the
amount of shapes that we spawn, this will add the random look of
it, most of the time I add a small amount of this just to create a little
bit of variation.

Some of the other options that are really fun to work with are thing
like “Color Random” in #03 which allows you so assign a random
random color to it, so for example for this moss material I use it set
to white and then push the randomness to the max. This will then
create the variation between the whites and instead of having the
one layer where everything is the same value and will thus create
different layers.
#02

#03
Tip! #01

We can add our own input shape inside

the pattern section, but we can also add
multiple inputs, so for this we can change
the “Pattern” to “Pattern Input” and then
the “Pattern Input Number” (seen in picture
#01) to the amount of your choosing, this
can be great to add more variations of the
same shape.
12 13
 Moss for Unreal Engine | Substance Designer Moss for Unreal Engine | Substance Designer

Tile sampler Additions

Now that we the tile samplers setup we can start doing some
#01
additional adjustments to really get the blobby feel that we want to
achieve that is typical on some of the references that we have been
using for this particular texture.

01 Spheroid base sections

#01
When looking at the specific moss that we are trying to recreate
here is that there is a specific underlying structure to it, with this
little section we are trying to recreate this underlying structure. So
I was trying to get that Bumpy feeling out of this section using some
basic blending of the “Cells 1” node that I blended with another
version of itself that I tiled more using a transformation node.

02 Vector map usage

We can then use the mask that we made in the previous section to
turn this into a vector mask that the tile samplers can utilize.
#02
To do this we can use the “Normal” node, this node will turn the
height texture we feed it into a
normal map texture, inside of “… The use of vector
this texture we can then set the maps was crucial to
intensity of the normals. get the nice flow in
the moss,
Vector maps are maps that use experimenting with
the information that a normal
map provides and turn it into
them is a blast ...”
directional, by using the value assigned to each pixel and turning it
into a vector. This will then in turn inform the shapes that will be
scattered around about their rotation, position and offset. We can
change the normal intensity in the normal map node to make the
effect even harsher. #01

03 Rotation map Additional maps

In this section we are going to look at all the final tweaks we want looking at some of the additional stuff that I did to further enhance
This section probably speaks for itself, but the rotation map #03
to do for the texture now that the main bulk of work is done, we the look and feel of the basecolor with some extra contrast for this
indicated the rotation of the different elements that will be spread
got all the different sections of moss generated and setup for the we will push the color itself first with an "HSL" node to help us with
around using the tile sampler. For this we don’t need to have a
height map so now we are going to look into doing some final that. We can then do this again along the same node, with another
normal map texture but a mask instead, so there is no
tweaks and then tackling all the other maps that we need to make HSL node to make another variation of the basecolor that is a bit
directionality embedded in this texture and it will just be used as an
a good texture. darker. Then what we do is we blend this according to the Ambient
influence instead of something that adds directionality.
Occlusion node from the combined , this will allow us to add some
04 Masks for different moss sections 01 Basecolor gradient maps depth to the texture by blending the darker version of the
basecolor with the Ambient Occlusion as a mask.
Now that we have all the height maps setup we will need to look at
For the generation of the different sections of moss that we use for
how we can introduce some color into the mix, for this we can use
the scattering of the single moss strands we are going to use a
"Gradient Maps", these allow you to pick a whole bunch of colors
combination of “flood fill”, “flood fill to grayscale” and then
and put them into gradient format. The node will then use this
use the “histogram scan” so we can pick the range of values we
gradient as a reference color for your black and white mask that it
want from that "Floodfill to grayscale”. Once we have a couple
will use to put the colors onto. So if we do this for every tile sampler
of these nodes than we can start subtracting them from each
we have setup and give them all slightly different colors we will get
other to get the masking we want for the different tile samplers at
some nice subtle variation to further emphasize that we have
the end.
different sections of moss growing on one chunk of wall.
#04
When you open the gradient
map node you can see that you “… Gradient maps
just got a simple gradient to make it really easy
start out with, we can start to to iterate and put
Tip! add colors to this by selecting life into a grayscale Tip!
one of the arrows and select a texture or image
We can get some nice ask variation when new color for that arrow. Use multiple HSL nodes (one set to be
we use a combination of a couple of Additionally, we can add colors such as height ...” lighter and one set to be darker) blended
nodes, these being the by double clicking on the gradient and also remove some of the together by an ambient occlusion node.
colors by dragging one of these points outside of gradient. When This will give some nice additional variation
we have all the different gradient maps we can now start looking at for the end result.
how we can blend them together, for this we grab two of the
gradient maps and we will blend them according to a mask. This
mask we can get from the tile sampler node and really pushing up
the contrast with a levels node. To finish this section off we will be
14 15
 Moss for Unreal Engine | Substance Designer Moss for Unreal Engine | Substance Designer
02 Emmisive output
Using an emissive map with moss can help you boost the
readability of the material, but it will also introduce some new
issues such as it being visible when within darkness. But in some
specific cases it might help you out and help you push the visual
quality. I ended up not using it in my example. For the setup itself,
I just take the end result of all the blended base color maps and
then lower it's intensity with a levels node. This also gives me the
nice added benefit that only the tips are visible of on the texture
itself. Then additionally I introduced another black overlay so I can
further go in an finely tweak the
light/darkness of the emissive “… Emmisive is
texture. The strength of the something that
emissive is one of those crucial might help in some
things to get right if you want to cases, but it’s highly
start using it in your textures, so
try and experiment as much as personal if you need
#02 #06 #07

possible and see what works for it or not ...”

your personal taste. 06 Ambient Occlusion output

03 Roughness setup And finally the most simple section of all, we can feed the
heightmap information that we got from the previous section
straight into an Ambient Occlusion (HBOA) node, giving you control
So in the base color section we looked into using gradient maps to
over the amount of AO with some simple controls like the scale of
add some color into the result of the height map, but we can also
the texture itself, the depth that you want in the texture and the
set it to be using gray scale instead of color. This makes it perfect to
radius or spread of the “Ambient Occlusion”.
use for the roughness map too. We basically use the same way of
working as we did in the base color part, we take all the results of
the Tile Samplers and then feed them into the Gradient maps and 07 Exporting as SBSAR
blend them afterwards. Then there is some additional stuff that I do
at the end, the overall look and feel was way too shiny for moss so So now that the setup for the
I just added an Invert Gray scale and then add a levels node to add material is done we can have a “… SBSAR will create
some more control for me to play around with. look at some of the options the needed hiarchy
that we can change before we and texture setup
04 Normal map output publish (or export) the material for Unreal Engine as
#03 to Unreal Engine and start soon as you import it #08
testing it. The main one that we
Then we get to the more easy stuff to setup, especially for this moss
need to look at here is the ...”
example. What we can do for the normal map is get the information
“Output Size” and will determine the size of the final texture that
from the height maps and run that through a "Normal" node, this
are being exported out.
node then gives you control for the intensity of the normal map #01
itself. To add some more variation to the normal map we can add
an additional normal node and then blend those two together with 08 Exporting as normal textures
a blend node with some of the moss sections as the mask. This will
add some additional subtle detail in the normal map texture. The But if you aren’t looking for exporting as an SBSAR (I don’t really
last thing we need to do in this got specific cases for this but you might have to at certain points
“… The normal map section is add in the base though! ) We can do this by going to the moss material in the
node gives you full structure of the moss. So we can explorer section and right clicking on the material name, in my
control over the sample this from the material in case this is “Moss” and then selecting “Export outputs as
the beginning in the Spheroid bitmaps”.
intensity based on base section. We can then add
the size of the all the details off the moss This will then give us the options that we need toe xport all the
texture ...” strands to the base texture of outputs as different bitmaps.
the Spheroid base texture.
#04
05 Height output
#02
So we have the final height output for all the moss sections
combined and the final height texture from the Spheroid base
texture, so let's combine both of these sections. Let's start with
doing some minor adjustments to the Spheroid base texture first
by running it through an Auto levels node to balance the black and
white values, then balance it with a levels node and then blurring it
a bit to smoothen it out a bit more.
Tip!
We can create parameters and use them
This is all done to my personal needs for the texture to blend it with in Unreal Engine, for this we need to make
the moss texture strand texture. All these adjustments like the the values that we want to adjust
levels node are added after the fact when I realize that I want to go
in and manually balance the output a bit more. Same goes for the
parameters first within the nodes that we
last levels node right before the output node, which is something want to adjust (example uses the “Noise”
that I balance by getting the material into the game once all the node) #01 we can then find them in the
textures are done and then go in and tweak it to my needs. properties and export panel panel #02#03
#05
16 17
 Moss for Unreal Engine | Substance Designer
In-engine setup
Now that the material inside of substance Designer is done it's time
to have a look at the texture inside of Unreal Engine, this section
will talk on setting up the material in the Engine with a focus on the
fuzzy shading node, which will greatly help the look of our
materials.

01 Testing the output of the Substance

First off, let's import the SBSAR file into Unreal Engine (make sure
that you have the substance plugin installed) once we have
imported this we can now go ahead and start testing the material
that gets created when importing the SBSAR, for the look and feel
of the textures themselves before we start digging into the more
elaborate setup that we will be digging into later.
#01

02 The master material and parameters

Now that we have all the textures from importing the SBSAR file
from Substance Designer we need we can start setting them up as
you would any other normal material, starting with getting all the
textures hooked up into a new material, we will then start adding
the first bit of the material that is new, this is Parallax Occlusion
mapping. This will give the texture some more depth by using the
information given and offsetting the pixels to create an illusion of
depth within the material itself.

Then once we have the basic material (or the master material in this
case) we can make a material instance by right clicking on the
master material and selecting “Create Material Instance”

03 Parallax occlusion mapping node

#02
First we will start off by adding the "Parallax Occlusion Mapping"
and start linking all the parameters to get it working. We can start
out with making all the first values into parameters so we can make
full use of the speed of material instances, the only thing that we
need to link up from other sources are the "UV's" and
"Heightmap Channel", we will need to set these up ourselves.
More information on setting this up can be found on my Blog post
#52 and on the Unreal Engine Wiki

After we have set up this node we can then link it up with the
different UV inputs of all of our textures to get the desired effect,
you might want to play around with making all the values
parameters and playing with the material instances instead of the
main material. This will greatly speed up the whole process.

04 Fuzzy shading node

Next up we will be looking at the other chunk in this material that
#03
will give the material a more unique look, this being the "Fuzzy
shading" node. This one will give the you material the feel that the

Unreal
edges will shine a bit more than the core of the material, so this
works really nice with the blobby base of our material.

03
Maybe a better way to understand for people that recognize the
work "Fresnel" this is basically what it does as well as some other
stuff too. With this node we can control the edge brightness (The

Engine
Fresnel), the core darkness and the power of both. Let's add the
"Fuzzy Shading" node for both the Basecolor and the Ambient
Occlusion, then make use of the "Promote to Parameter" trick
once more to create some quick parameters. I loved testing them
separately, so this is also why I added two separate sets of
parameters for the fuzzy shading nodes.

#04
19
 Moss for Unreal Engine | Substance Designer

#05

05 Master material overview

Now with all this added there is some additional stuff that you want
to add, but is more standard than the “Fuzzy Shading” and the
“Parallax Occlusion” so I will not be diving into those things too
deep but shouldn't be too hard to setup for yourself either. For
people that are interested I will include the master material from
Unreal Engine in this package so you can see how I set that up
(keep in mind that this will not include the textures needed to
render the material properly and will give you compilation issues
because of that!)

06 Tweaking the values

Feel free to tweak this one to
your own pleasure, this is “… Material
basically what I do with all my Instances really #06
parameters and materials, speed up the way
which is also why I love working you iterate on your
with the Unreal Engine
Materials and Material
materials ...”
Instances so much. I tend tend
to keep to realistic values too much for my personal work and if
nothing else is depending on this, so I just tend to balance things
visually and do a couple of iterations of doing it like this.
Tip!
So whenever you got something that you want to test out within
your materials just make use of the material instance system and
Hopefully this helped you create your own
get testing! Moss Material, if you got any questions or
feedback please reach out and send me
a Direct Message on twitter!
Thanks,
Timothy Dries

20