In Week 4, I further explored the Sequencer in Unreal Engine and then progressed to working on creating Materials.
Initially, I learned how to create Shots in Sequencer, which is essential for maintaining organization when working with multiple cameras. To create a Shot, you first need to add a Subsequence track from the Add button in the Sequencer menu. This Subsequence Track serves to organize and manage the various cameras assigned to different tasks.
To create Shots, we first need to generate a Level Sequence from the Cinematics menu and ensure proper naming for organization. These sequences are then added to the Subsequence Track, where their lengths can be adjusted. Once the Shots are in the Subsequence Track, we can assign cameras to them by selecting the camera, pressing Ctrl + X, and then double-clicking on the desired Shot to paste the camera into it.
This week, I also learned how to create Materials in Unreal Engine. I began by downloading a Material from Quixel Bridge and importing it into Unreal Engine. I then created a new Material and used the Material’s node editor to add the Normal, Base Colour, and Roughness maps of the imported Material. I learned that the R channel is for Ambient Occlusion, the G channel for Roughness, and the B channel for Displacement. I connected the RGB channel of the Colour Map to the Base Colour, the G channel of the Roughness Map to the Roughness input, and the RGB channel of the Normal Map to the Normal input of the new Material.
Next, I experimented with adjusting the tiling of the Material by adding Texture Coordinate, Multiply, and Add nodes. This allowed me to modify the tiling based on specific needs, and I tested different values to explore various outcomes
After creating a Material, we were instructed to generate a Material Instance by right-clicking on the created Material and selecting the Material Instance option. The key difference between a Master Material and a Material Instance is that the Material Instance inherits all the properties from the Master Material and allows for real-time updates and adjustments.