Preface

This Unreal Engine 5 Shaders and Effects cookbook aims to be your companion on your quest to master the world of materials in Unreal Engine. Throughout its pages, you’ll be able to discover many of the techniques that enable the powerful graphics on display in many of the latest interactive experiences, from the cutting-edge graphics present in some of the most renowned triple-A video games made today to some of the innovative effects making their way into the movie and visualization industries.

The importance that Unreal has gained in recent years across several industries can’t be overstated, and that prominence is a direct result of both the powerful visuals it offers and the ease of use across many different fields. Taking advantage of that situation, we’ll take a look at some of the most used techniques that will make you, the reader, capable of handling any material-related challenge you face within Unreal.

By the end of this book, you’ll become competent in a wide variety of techniques that will allow you to create many different materials, which will put you at an advantage when working with any type of real-time rendering project.

Who this book is for

Anyone interested in Unreal Engine, rendering, real-time graphics, or simply passionate about creating stunning visuals will be more than capable of following the contents of this book. This will be possible thanks to a gentle learning curve that takes you from the basics of the rendering pipeline to some of the most advanced techniques in that area. This journey provides a wealth of information that will see you become proficient in this topic, no matter your background knowledge!

What this book covers

In Chapter 1, Understanding Physically Based Rendering, we will look at the basics of working with materials (and lights!) in Unreal Engine.

In Chapter 2, Customizing Opaque Materials and Using Textures, we’ll learn how to create some of the most common materials available in Unreal.

In Chapter 3, Making Translucent Objects, we’ll discover how to work with translucent shaders, a very important type that allows us to create substances such as glass or water.

In Chapter 4, Playing with Nanite, Lumen, and Other UE5 Goodies, we’ll explore some of the new rendering features that made it into the latest version of the engine.

In Chapter 5, Working with Advanced Material Techniques, we’ll take a look at some of the more advanced features available in the Material Editor.

In Chapter 6, Mobile Shaders and Optimization, we’ll understand how to optimize our materials when targeting mobile devices.

In Chapter 7, Exploring Some More Useful Nodes, we’ll see how to take advantage of some nifty nodes that defy categorization.

In Chapter 8, Going Beyond Traditional Materials, we’ll work with some types of shaders that challenge the logic of where materials should be applied!

In Chapter 9, Adding Post-Processing Effects, we’ll tap into Unreal’s post-processing pipeline to create shaders that simultaneously affect the whole scene.

To get the most out of this book

You will need a version of Unreal Engine, preferably the latest one. At the time of writing, this is Unreal Engine 5.1.1, even though 5.2.0 is already on the horizon. The topics covered in this book should be applicable to all Unreal Engine 5.X versions.

Software/hardware covered in the book	Operating system requirements
Unreal Engine 5	Windows 10 or 11
Optional – ray tracing capable graphics card
Optional – image editing software (Photoshop, GIMP)

All of the topics can be tackled using only the default Unreal Engine installation. Access to a hardware-enabled ray tracing graphics card can be useful in a specific recipe where we discuss hardware and software ray tracing. Access to image editing software is not needed, but we recommend it in case you want to modify or author your own textures.

Download the project files

You can download the project files for this book from the following link: https://packt.link/A6PL9

If there’s an update to the project files, they will be updated through that link as well.

We also have other project and code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://packt.link/ia7i3.

Conventions used

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: “Select System info from the Administration panel.”

Tips or important notes

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