Materials in the UE - Metal

[kexx456]

Hello all,

 

I'm trying to make metal arms with the same metallic "surface" as the Archon's. What material instance, or how can I create one, or what do I do in order to wrap a soldier's arms in their entirety with such a metallic material?

[kexx456]

OK,

 

So I found the material instances Gold and Silver in the Jewelry upk, which works, but, selecting them doesn't allow me to assign textures on them. More importantly, MSK and NRM maps. Anyway to bypass this? Is there a simple way to give these metallic materialinstances the chance to have the 3 textures maps almost all other materials have? Any "allow textures" box somewhere I can check?

[E3245]

Are you trying to assign Material Instances to another Material Instance? That won't work, since the parent material the MatInst is referring to needs textures for the input.

 

If there is a parameter for MetalMask_Alpha, or MetalMask_BChannel, then you can use the alpha channel of the Mask Texture (_MSK) to give the mesh in question some metallic feel. Obviously, you would need to export the texture, and add a alpha channel with a mask. You can then setup the Metal Color to Gold (FFD700 or 255,215,0) and it should then work.

[kexx456]

Thanks for the reply!

 

Ok, if I'm understanding you correctly, I can import a MSK texture into the UE, but I need to add an alpha channel to the mask texture, but how do I do that? Is that an option in photoshop when saving the TGA? or is it an option in the UE when I import the texture? I know I have to choose CharacterSpecular for MSKs, right?

 

Sorry if these are dumb questions, I'm just new at this and trying to figure it out. I tried researching and reverse engineering how the archon's material is set up, as it has both metallic and non-metallic parts. But I failed. Thus, the thread. Hope you can help me further!

[E3245]

Thanks for the reply!

 

Ok, if I'm understanding you correctly, I can import a MSK texture into the UE, but I need to add an alpha channel to the mask texture, but how do I do that? Is that an option in photoshop when saving the TGA? or is it an option in the UE when I import the texture? I know I have to choose CharacterSpecular for MSKs, right?

 

Sorry if these are dumb questions, I'm just new at this and trying to figure it out. I tried researching and reverse engineering how the archon's material is set up, as it has both metallic and non-metallic parts. But I failed. Thus, the thread. Hope you can help me further!

 

In Photoshop, there should be a tab called Channels, usually next to the Layers tab, depending on your version. There should be a button that lets you add a channel, click on that and it will make an alpha channel. It will be black, so you might wanna copy and paste something in there (click on the alpha channel and paste).