How to use Displacement in Unreal Engine 5.2

With this new update we get a new way to add displacement inside Unreal Engine 5.2
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[@MR3DDev]

Clarification: Trim relative Error acts as "mesh resolution" so the lower the value the more resolution you get. I did 0.01 just to test things and got a 16million polygon plane, so be careful, I am not responsible for any fires your machine may cause if you go too low.

[@chromatiCityGame]

I did few tests and you can do this whole process inside UE5: Make a copy of the texture ending in "ORDp" and extract the blue Displacement channel by going to edit -> Source Color Settings -> Color Space as "custom" and set blue and white to something like 0 to 256 and you are done. Now The texture uses only the blue channel. Use this texture as a displacement for Nanite. No need for separate downloads from Quixel. Seems to work fine...

[@MR3DDev]

Great tip, thanks

[@4tee2]

Hi. In UE 5.2 there is no "edit" choice. You find Source Color Settings in the Details panel now.

[@harrysanders818]

Wow! Thanks a lot! That's actually quite powerful not only for extracting Displacement, but for access to any channels of any packed textures!

[@harrysanders818]

I just checked it out, and for some reason, this method doesn't work for me. It shows a wrong displacement distribution, whereas the method in the video worked perfectly. However, good to know nevertheless.

[@theonethumb]

So much easier than the workaround "modeling tools method"! Thanks for sharing as always!!!

[@jorricktv9550]

Thx .. makes it really easy to get the same result as in substance designer now =)

[@snookofficial7211]

This is awesome, this update seemed to go under the radar, it seems odd that you can't just do it in the material editor but I guess that because it has to create the geometry. Also, great tip about installing quixel as a stand alone app to get additional textures, I started using UE with version 5.1 so I never knew about this.

[@pedrorivera1892]

amazing, thank you!

[@LawsOnJoystick]

thank you. i have too run quixel outside of unreal.but was easy!

[@chriscoppens3535]

This looks pretty useful. I remember the old workflow of creating a mesh from a displacement map in UE modeling tools. This looks like a 50x faster workflow

[@jcGamemontage]

Less control i think.. i prefere the modeling tool way

[@DiabloFox]

Thanks for the tutorial, very useful !

[@BingGeaux]

Me again, thanks for your video.

[@beyondgoodkitten4407]

I've noticed that meshes displaced with this method are not recognizable by Lumen -- and hence they are excluded from GI and Reflection calculations. You can easily verify that with Lumen Visualization Mode (where only random triangles are being visible in debug viewports). Also exporting those meshes out of UE5 to FBX format produces a similar result to what we can observe in Lumen debug view modes. I really hope that this issue will be address in the upcoming patches.

[@benblaumentalism6245]

Really? That’s pretty serious.

[@zizzonedibattipaglia6247]

Still not working in the material graph though, so it would be impossible to blend materials and the displacement with them on a single mesh. Seems to me pretty much the same as doing it with modeling tools. Not much of a big deal imo

[@TheFunDimension]

I was thinking the same. I see no option for the displacement map there. Wonder what’s the deal.

[@weightednormal3682]

This is a big step backwards for 5x. Not sure how this was overlooked?

[@hafizmtariq]

good one

[@snookofficial7211]

Hopefully they'll add some tiling options to this in the future

[@3dystopia606]

Finally ! Thanks, useful video as usual :)

[@Xavwanderboy]

Always great to hear from you

[@jumpieva]

A few things This process is similar and still possible in UE 5.1. But it's not baked into the details and has to be done via modeling tools. You have to enable geometry script plugins I think though. Bridge AND mixer will let you download standalone displacement maps -- but yea mixer is still not natively incorporated into UE. The big question is, will we be able to do true landscape displacement?

[@MR3DDev]

No landscape for now.

[@nxgentech]

At some point yes, there is currently a (very) experimental feature for Nanite runtime tessellation, if you are feeling adventurous on the master branch (r.Nanite.Tessellation and r.Nanite.AllowTessellation), and the goal is to be able to use Nanite Landscapes with runtime tessellation in the future.

[@dillonpunko1781]

@@MR3DDev There is landscape displacement, in the form of Virtual Heightfield Meshes. It's a bit of work to set it up, but it's essentially the same thing.

[@bsrhoad]

very clear and concise explanation, Subscribed !

[@MR3DDev]

Thanks :)

[@brianmichaelfuller]

Great video!! Thanks for posting

[@shubhamartist2001]

can we change Displacement map using vertex painting . . . I mean instance displacement

[@b.a.g2073]

Thanks for great update. One thing you could have done to show it off more is change light dir to show all the great shadow deets :)

[@MR3DDev]

Thanks for the feedback :)

[@7_of_1]

Nice one. Did you convert to nanite or was it already nanite? Also, this seems the same as I used to do when UE5 first came out but had to go to modeling tools and tessellate the plane first?

[@MR3DDev]

This is a brand new things, no need to go to modeling tools and yes it uses nanite.

[@katanalevygames]

Yes, unfortunately it is essentially the same as going into modelling tools, it's just in a different place now. Still not even close to the displacement options we used to have in the material and I can't wait until they solve that with nanite.

[@IstyManame]

How costly is doing this memory-wise and in terms of overall perfomance? Because i remember doing similar stuff with modeling tools some time ago, i had a completely empty scene and switching from planes/walls to displaced geometry with Nanite caused major fps drops and frametime was all over the place, but i'm not sure if that was because at the time i had 1060 with just 3gb of VRAM on board

[@MR3DDev]

Depends on your system, remember you are generating more triangles with the displacement, whether is nanite or not, it still creates a hit on performance.

[@RodrigoOrtega82]

Sorry if this is basic, I'm new to UE, but is there a way to change the tiling and link that to the tiling I'm using for the maps inside the material? Thanks!

[@tomhikon]

Texture coordinate node I believe will help.

[@wilhelmvonc]

The quickest way to create displacement so far, but still wonder if there's a parameter to control the Displacement Map Tilling with Tex Coordinate. If they add this later on, it would be a real alternative of tesselletion.

[@FionnHand]

Find a way to tile it?

[@wilhelmvonc]

@@FionnHand I don't know, just saw your comment and I searched about it by the way, then I find this one in 5.3. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z57KaZ2na798n6c

[@wilhelmvonc]

@@FionnHand kzbin.info/www/bejne/aGPIiY1mo6lsmsU Confirmed, in 5.3 this is the way we want which support Tilling.

[@AdrianoFerreira-nb8cd]

does landscape have displacement as well?

[@devasishpatnaik7694]

is this method can be used on landscape?

[@danielklishch5831]

Great stuff! Can it be used with a custom mesh not the Box Volume?

[@MR3DDev]

It can, just watch your UV seams :)

[@proflooney]

so will it work the same way on your own mesh say a set of stairs you import and add texture to?

[@MR3DDev]

yes, just watch those UV seams.

[@FrancoisCaffiaux]

Hi, The Fallback vertices count is pretty high! Should we lower the "Fallback Triangle Percent" parameter?

[@MR3DDev]

Depends on your system or what kind of asset you are after, if you want to reduce triangles increase the trim relative error number

[@hardway777]

You can use mouse wheel while moving to control movement speed.

[@MR3DDev]

Thnaks :)

[@Nemecys]

When i press apply NOTHING happens - I even tried this with a heavily subdivided mesh. Any ideas what im doing wrong? IS this bugged in 5.2.1? I have my trim errors set to 0, I made my own mesh via the modelling tools and also duplicated a plane - still no results. Doesn't matter if i have a material in there or not Any advice would be golden!

[@benblaumentalism6245]

It’s too bad there isn’t an RGB filter, so you can just choose the blue channel of the packed map. Seems inelegant to have to open up Bridge separately. Is there not a way to get the displacement maps through the Bridge window? Thank you for this informative video!

[@chromatiCityGame]

There absolutely is a way! You can do it inside UE5: Make a copy of the texture ending in "ORDp" and extract the blue Displacement channel by going to edit -> Source Color Settings -> Color Space as "custom" and set blue and white to something like 0 to 256 and you are done. Now The texture uses only the blue channel. Use this texture as a displacement for Nanite. No need for separate downloads or other tricks.

[@benblaumentalism6245]

@@chromatiCityGame Thank you. I didn’t know that! I am still using the first two channels in my material for ambient occlusion and roughness (sometimes). Often I end up replacing them with my own constants. There’s a filter in Modeling Tools, which is why I’m surprised the same filter doesn’t appear in this workflow.

[@MaksKuaka]

I can't seem to get this to work with the path tracer

[@adamplechaty]

Hi, how's this method different than doing it thru modelling tools? Don't think you mentioned this in the vid, sorry if I missed that. Thx

[@MR3DDev]

Honestly? not sure is just another way of doing things.

[@TimV777]

Can it be used for characters with udims if I get a low poly and want to apply a disp map from zbrush? 🤔

[@MR3DDev]

I don't think its there yet.

[@dondichuidian7776]

Nice! Thanks!

[@user-ev6yz2mw5r]

Once the nanite displacement is applied is there a way to export the displaced mesh out of UE ?

[@MR3DDev]

I don't think so, but if you wanted this outside of Unreal is easier just to do it in Blender.

[@ganso6733]

dumb question, how did you managed to combine those two objects as one in 8:31 ?

[@MR3DDev]

I just had grid snap on and duplicate (alt+drag)

[@basiator2]

1:00 Or you could just enter the Modeling Mode and create plane that way. It'll generate geometry inside "/Levels/Generated" folder. Also you can specify folder for generated geometry.

[@StephaneCharre]

Can this be used through material blueprints ?

[@MR3DDev]

Haven't tested it that way yet

[@StephaneCharre]

@@MR3DDev No worries. Let me know if you do :) Keep up the great work.

[@peterallely5417]

Yessss is this video going to be what I saw Saeed make a video on a couple days ago, 5.3 Nanite Tessellation? Cos his video got me real excited.

[@MR3DDev]

IDK about 5.3 this one is in 5.3 but it does include auto tessellation

[@gekfurian]

It's all fun and games until it's not a singular plane but a complex shape with unaligned UVWs along convex angles.

[@MR3DDev]

True statement.

[@ChimeraArts]

What about a custom mesh? I made a model but, with no place to put the displacement, I’m stuck.

[@MR3DDev]

You still can, just watch those UV seams.

[@arielshpitzer]

but can you dissplace any mesh or just a rectangular plane ?

[@MR3DDev]

Any mesh will do, however displacement has always had to do with the UVs so watch the seams.

[@benblaumentalism6245]

I usually use a cube that is scaled to whatever the texture scale is. Most “Highest Quality” Megascans surfaces are 200X200 or 100X100. So my cube is usually either 200^3 or 100^3. I then scale the X value by looking up the actual dimensions of the real thing, such as specific brick types, wall thicknesses, etc. I let it create the mesh, then I turn on Nanite. The resulting mesh is usually then used as a building block in the scene. My struggle at the moment (though I plan to figure this out) is that I like to make my materials use tri-planar (world-aligned) textures. Prior to displacement, this has the value of allowing you to freely scale the mesh, and the texture doesn’t stretch or squeeze. It keeps its true size despite how you scale the object, which is great for things like brick walls, gravel, etc. But displacement results in a new mesh where the texture size and mesh deformation end up being resized if you change the size of it, and it will no longer be world-aligned.

[@rdfilmefoto]

Better, but directly on material nodes willl be perfect

[@Staglaitor]

Cool! but can you "assign" this displacement on a cube-mesh? I did something and got texture-seam-tearing

[@MR3DDev]

Yes cause this is UV based like all displacement so where you have your seams it will tear.

[@Staglaitor]

​@@MR3DDev Thanks for reply - shouldn't the developer of unreal engine make displacement-falloff to the end of uv-shell? May be it will not help? Hm....

[@microbounce2009]

And if I want to tile the texture, will the scrolling also do it?

[@MR3DDev]

I don't think there is texture tiling for this but you can duplicate the mesh like I did at the end or use PCG :)

[@newearth33]

For this to be a realistic workflow unreal needs to include UV tiling for the displacement map. Manual tiling is madness. That said, appreciate the tutorial, cheers.

[@MR3DDev]

I agree and thanks for watching :)

[@newearth33]

@@MR3DDev Was surprised they removed the function to add displacement via material. I just discovered the displacer plugin by metatrox though - have you used it? Looks great! And can now add snow + moss. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pGTXaGugf5WmhdU

[@jaevaera7369]

how do we blend multiple materials ...like before?

[@MR3DDev]

You can still blend materials on a landscape but with no displacement

[@selimsaidi378]

nice tutorial but does not work if we rescale main material too bad

[@thegreatSalu]

I still haven't updated to 5.2..can you confirm if Displacement is available for Landscape terrain?

[@MR3DDev]

It is not.

[@thegreatSalu]

@@MR3DDev that sucks..

[@VRDivision]

good video sir!

[@DeekerActual]

just wondering.. is the available in 5.1 or only 5.2? thnx!

[@MR3DDev]

5.2 AFAIK

[@lmbits1047]

Now waiting for a landscape displacement so we are back to where it was before nanite. Vertex paint is also a let down with nanites.

[@MR3DDev]

I doubt they will add it back to landscape but who knows, fingers crossed.

[@lucasselfslagh]

@@MR3DDev why do you doubt that?

[@imvisuals215]

If I’m not mistaken you can use the map. Just use the blue channel.

[@MR3DDev]

Is there a way to just use the blue channel in this tool? I saw none

[@imvisuals215]

@@MR3DDev ok so I just got to my spaceship and from my run when u put the displacement map in there is a drop down right beneath it and u can pick the channel there. I JUST did it. U can also get ur plane from the modeling mode as well they are at the top. As well as other geometries.

[@MR3DDev]

@@imvisuals215 Great tip, thanks

[@yantingye1677]

Now that the displacement effect is in the model editor, not in the parent material, would it be necessary to manually modify and add the displacement effect of the landscape or mesh assets in the previous UE4 version of the mall? Would it be difficult to recognize or modify it yourself?

[@yantingye1677]

After seeing these comments, I already know the answer. Thank you

[@CrazyDevSurvivor]

What about landscape?

[@ajaxx.christian]

is there a way to do this to skeletal meshes?

[@MR3DDev]

Not really is just for static meshes.

[@AKThem06]

why didn't they just implement the same feature from the displacement feature in the modelling tools where we could just plug the blue channel of the 'ORD' map instead of bringing in another displacement map?

[@MR3DDev]

IDK I am just the messenger :)

[@Feddark]

Still prefer shader driven displacement cuz you could apply it to skeletal meshes

[@can.gorgun]

beautiful

[@ZorrroUK]

How does doing this to a plane impact performance? I imagine a building model detailed like this would kill frames fast, or am I thinking old school (not tested nanites myself yet)?

[@MR3DDev]

Not much since we are using nanite here, but also don't go insane with the polys :)

[@REDSIDEofficial]

Finally!

[@MarcioSilva-vf5wk]

There is no control over scale?

[@MR3DDev]

CAn you elaborate? If you mean how much displacement you can change that in the magnitude slider.

[@MarcioSilva-vf5wk]

@@MR3DDev Thanks for repliyng, I mean, over the material option, you have tiling control, but over displacement, as I see it, there is not, or it is going to follow the material parameters?

[@MR3DDev]

@@MarcioSilva-vf5wk I don't see that option here unfortunately.

[@MarcioSilva-vf5wk]

@@MR3DDev Thanks, maybe they gonna add in next update

[@Animeke-san]

Displacement is back in materials in 5.3.

[@billB101]

What happens if you use the ORD?

[@MR3DDev]

You gonna get some weird results cause is not the map it needs, but let me know I love to see wacky results

[@oxygencube]

siiick!

[@emirunalan1287]

I still prefer the displacement in UE4 :/ This workflow remeshes and creates a new geometry according to the texture. Nothing like what we had. :/ Thanks for the video btw!

[@shank2001]

This way is MUCH better in every measurable way. Easier to implement, better for performance, VRAM usage, and resultant quality. The power of Nanite.

[@ignaciolopez7605]

​@@shank2001Note for me. This system does not work with layered material/height blending. and that limits a lot. In my case I rarely use a single material, I like to mix it to get more realism. It doesn't work for landscape either. It's been a step backwards

[@CabrioDriving]

Create a big, icy, snowy planet and moon, procedurally as of UE 5.2 . A topic for new video? :)

[@MR3DDev]

I am actually looking into PCG :)

[@user-vi6je4vv9l]

nice shit

[@alpertuna508]

Why is there always talk about the plane? Character displacement still sucks or even does not exist. Anyway, keep waiting...

[@SomethingEternal]

Displacement is not back. You got too excited and wanted those clicks more than to provide accurate information. If it wasn't for all the monetization obsessed clickbait out there, I'd have probably published my own tesselation methods by now. But I know it's just going to get picked up and repurchased as clickbait advertised to do what it isn't meant to do, so I'd rather just wait and publish it on my own time. Because if 5 people got an honest representation of its uses, it'd be more constructive than these kinds of rush for attention videos.

[@BlenderUnreal]

weird. i dont have these options with "download settings" and "export setting". i only get this megascan options with material overrides and material blend settings. any ideas?

[@svs4662]

Does this work for Landscape Displacement ? ... we truly need that for environments 🙏

[@MR3DDev]

Waiting on that