A Technical Overview
In today’s game and simulation technologies, finding a balance between realism and performance is key. Unreal Engine’s new material system, Substrate, emerges as a powerful tool for achieving this balance. Substrate provides greater flexibility and control compared to traditional material models, enabling much more detailed results, especially on complex surfaces like car materials.
In this blog post, we'll take a technical look at the car material I created using Substrate, and explore how to use this robust system effectively.
What is Substrate?
Substrate is a next-generation material system introduced in Unreal Engine 5. Unlike traditional material models, it supports more complex surface interactions and layering. This allows for much finer control and the ability to use different surface properties together. For versatile surfaces like car materials, these features offer a higher level of realism and performance.
Creating the Car Material
Car materials typically consist of various surface types: metallic bodywork, plastic parts, glass surfaces, and tires. Accurately representing these materials enhances the user experience with a more realistic look. Substrate allows for combining these different surface types seamlessly to achieve great results.
Material Layers: One of Substrate's key strengths is its layered structure. When creating the car material, I started by preparing the metallic body layer. Substrate enabled precise adjustments of the surface's reflective and smoothness properties.
Metal Layer: I enhanced the metallic properties for the bodywork to increase the surface’s ability to reflect light.
Clearcoat Layer: I added a glossy clearcoat on top. This made the surface appear smoother and allowed light to diffuse more effectively.
Micro Details: Micro details play a significant role in car materials. With Substrate’s ability to control micro geometric details and micro reflections, I was able to realistically portray small scratches, dust, and dirt marks on the bodywork. This adds depth, especially in projects where detail is crucial, such as racing games.
Plastic and Glass Surfaces: Substrate excels in handling multiple materials simultaneously. For the plastic surfaces, I applied low-reflection and matte settings to achieve a less shiny, more realistic look. For the glass surfaces, I fine-tuned the balance between transparency and reflection.
Performance Optimization: While creating realistic materials, it's essential to avoid performance drops. Substrate, despite its layered structure, offers a good framework for performance optimization. By using effective LOD (Level of Detail) settings while creating the car material, I was able to prevent performance issues.
Why Substrate?
Substrate offers far more flexibility compared to the PBR (Physically Based Rendering) material system we’ve used before in Unreal Engine. For car materials, where multiple surfaces need to be combined, Substrate’s level of detail and realism is unmatched. Additionally, its performance-friendly nature allows it to run smoothly even in large projects.
Conclusion
The car material I created using Substrate demonstrates the power of Unreal Engine 5’s innovative material system. With its layered structure, micro details, and performance optimization, you can achieve realistic and impressive results in games and simulations. By using Substrate for cars or other complex surfaces, you can gain an unprecedented level of control and visual fidelity.
I’ll continue sharing more content and technical insights with the Unreal Engine community. See you in the next post!



Comments