Materials & the Material Editor
Node-based PBR shader authoring — from simple surfaces to layered terrain materials.
PBR Parameters
UE5 uses a GGX microfacet BRDF. Every material is defined by these core pins on the Result node:
| Pin | Range | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Base Color | RGB 0–1 | Diffuse albedo. Keep within 0.05–0.9 for realism. |
| Metallic | 0 or 1 | Metal vs dielectric. Rarely use fractional values. |
| Roughness | 0–1 | 0 = mirror, 1 = fully diffuse. |
| Normal | Tangent RGB | Per-pixel surface orientation from a normal map. |
| Emissive | HDR (>1 OK) | Self-illumination. Values >1 feed Lumen GI. |
| Opacity | 0–1 | Used only with Translucent / Masked blend modes. |
Key Expression Nodes
TextureSample— samples a 2D texture (T+click)Lerp— blend A→B by alpha (L+click)Multiply— component-wise multiply (M+click)ScalarParameter— exposed float for Material Instances (S+click)VectorParameter— exposed color for Material Instances (V+click)Fresnel— edge-angle factor for rim highlightsPanner— animated UV scrolling for water, lava
Material Instances
Create a Master Material with exposed parameters, then derive
Material Instance Constants that override only those parameters —
no shader recompile needed. Use UMaterialInstanceDynamic at runtime
to change parameters from C++ or Blueprint.
Shader Complexity
Use View Mode → Shader Complexity to spot expensive materials. Green = cheap, red = very expensive.
Blend Modes
- Opaque — writes to G-Buffer. Most efficient.
- Masked — binary clip via Opacity Mask. No depth sorting.
- Translucent — alpha blended. Does not write depth — expensive.
- Additive — adds color on top; great for fire and sparks.