Tempered Steel Shader - Advanced Materials - Episode 20

[@RenaudGaland21]

So so good, Ben! Thank you again for everything you are doing for our community.

[@VulgarGnome]

Ben you absolute madman. fantastic stuff

[@bunnybreaker]

Your tutorials are soooo good. The detailed research, references, and explanations are super solid. I'm a Unity dev, but want to experiment with UE soon. I'll definitely be revisiting these to compare similarities and differences between their respective shader systems.

[@AngelAgudoGuerrero]

Another BEST tutorial! Thanks MASTER!

[@Prototype0rangE]

Saw you at GDC (didn't say hello) glad to see you found time for a new one. Loving your channel.

[@BenCloward]

Thanks!

[@NopeSecret]

Love your videos! You rock Ben you are the best teacher out there for shaders. I learned how to pack my textures efficiently from you. I have learned soooo much. Thank you!!!

[@julienteral9140]

Phenomenal tutorial, some of the best stuff ive seen from all youtube. Congrats & Thank You. If you ever get the time, I would love a tutorial on how to to make a diamond material!!

[@TheDesknight]

I like that visual references made a comeback in recent videos , it was my fav. part from the Ue4 videos.

[@HammerdownProtocol]

Very cool. Thank you.

[@jihadrouani5525]

Any plans to cover Unity's surface grading bump mapping?

[@BenCloward]

Surface Gradient Bump Mapping would be a great topic to cover! Thanks for the suggestion!

[@jbttbjtjjtbbtj4865]

@@BenCloward can you please make a NIAGARA tutorial. I've been trying to make blood splashes for all week long I watched all the tutorials on YT . no matter what technique i used it always looked cheap I need to learn from someone who knows what is he doing

[@BenCloward]

Since I’ve never used Niagara, I’m probably not the person who knows what he’s doing with that tool. Wish I could help though.

[@jbttbjtjjtbbtj4865]

@@BenCloward you made the water droplets because of that I assumed you would know how to do it

[@jihadrouani5525]

@@jbttbjtjjtbbtj4865 water droplets are probably done with the particle system, the ripples effect is shader graph...

[@MultiCaRaDeCoNcHa]

Will you ever make tutorials on UE5.2 substrate?

[@BenCloward]

My impression of Substrate is that it's not quite ready for production but is in an experimental state. When I was at GDC, I spoke with a tech artist friend who works at Epic, and he said they're very much still developing it. Once it's further along, I will definitely do some tutorials on it. But it's not really the style of my channel to show off the new shiny stuff. I prefer to teach principles that are more engine-agnostic - or ideas that can be applied in any engine. Substrate is very much Ureal-only. The existing model of using Base Color, Metallic, Roughness ,etc, is pretty much the industry standard, and the main concern I currently have with Substrate is that it's going against that a bit. It's making it possible to create some really fancy, edge-case type materials that weren't possible before, but in the process it's also making it more complicated to just make the simple, basic stuff. I'm hoping that that can be fixed/improved before the settle on the final solution.

[@mahnomix]

Super. 🎉❤

[@mahnomix]

Or you can make a tutorial with car painting and stripes or decals.

[@tylergorzney8499]

I believe in one of your older video you covered using crevice and AO to add, as an example, dirt to a rock shader. Is it possible to use the AO from Lumen or something, to make a rock prop shader that will add a sand layer in the dark areas between rocks that are seperate props? I would imagine use of Screen Space AO or something? Love your tutorials, looking forward to advanced substrate materials for UE 5.2. I would even much appreciate you coveriung it beforeit is final and still experimental

[@BenCloward]

That's an interesting idea. I'm not familiar with the way Lumen works under the hood, but I think that it gets calculated separately from your material description - which means that its data wouldn't be available for the material to use at the point in the rendering process when the material is being evaluated. I would need to investigate it to know that for sure, but my gut feeling is that it wouldn't work.

[@tylergorzney8499]

@@BenCloward if not by usingg lumens AO, is there a way to access screen space AO or something else? Perhaps distance fields? I need to learn more about distance fields, as I only know of it, but not how to utilize it. I have a landscape with massive nanite spire rocks jutting out and would like to render sand on those rocks where they creat crevices and have no clue how it could be done. I dont recall you ever doing a material that used distance fields?

[@skey2735]

Thank you very much for your video. May I ask where can I download the picture materials used in the video?

[@jackmordh9130]

I also went down the thin film interference rabbit hole after your bubble video. How cool is light? Great vid. These always show me something cool about shaders, but also make me curious about why things happen in the real world.

[@NopeSecret]

I never learned much about light until I started working with Blender and other 3d modeling programs. After designing Materials I am much more aware of the different types of light and how light interacts and essentially builds out entire perception of reality. I also like magic mushrooms so yeah.

[@nashonightmare]

Hello Ben, this question is not regarding this video. How does opacity masks work in games?. I heard they cost performance. My problem is are they cost performance if we cannot see those transparent areas. As an example if we mask out the body parts of a base mesh as we add clothes to the model.

[@BenCloward]

Using an opacity mask isn't any more expensive than any of the other things you might do in a pixel shader. However, in the scenario you're describing, it's not going to save you very much. To understand why, it's important to know the process that happens when a mesh gets rendered. (I made a video on this if you want to go back and review it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/kHa7h4Sdl7yrh7s) First, the vertices get processed on the CPU. Then they get sent to the GPU. There, they get transformed in the vertex shader from objects space to screen space. Then they pass through the interpolators and converted to pixels. Then in the pixel shader, they are shaded. And then finally they get output to the screen. If you use an opacity mask, all of those steps are still happening except for the last one - so you're not really saving much because all of those steps are still happening. You can make it a little bit cheaper if you use a Clip instruction right at the beginning of the pixel shader because then the shading step will get skipped, but you'd still be doing the CPU and vertex shader steps. If possible, it would be much better to swap out the parts of the body mesh with alternate versions that don't have polygons in the parts that are covered. That way, you'd be skipping the whole process for those polygons.

[@nashonightmare]

@@BenCloward Thank you very much. I understand it very well now. But what is the reason people say opacity masks cost more performance?. Is it the same reason that you mentioned, we render parts of a model we cannot see while we could remove their vertices?.

[@BenCloward]

Probably better to ask the people that are saying that. I’m not familiar with their reasoning.

[@nashonightmare]

@@BenCloward Ok thanks. I will study more with your videos.

[@STRELOK290799]

Hi Ben, I followed your tutorial to perfection (which was very interesting and full of useful information on both real materials and how nodes work in unreal). Unfortunately I'm stuck and I can't solve the issue regarding the LocalPosition and Mask (B) nodes, which apply the gradient used only on the upper half of the preview sphere, presenting a sharp "cut" right where the Z mask of component Mask ends (practically on the equator of the sphere), how can I solve it? I don't understand why it doesn't work for me the way it does for you.

[@itay7]

So how is the tempered mask different from the metal iridescent you created in the metal shader episode? Speaking from a realistic material point

[@afrikaansedude2525]

Please do a grass shader 🥺🔥

[@雨里-i7j]

Now that we have made bubbles and Tempered Steel, how about laser for the next topic

[@BenCloward]

A laser is a light source, though. What type of shader do you have in mind?

[@雨里-i7j]

​@@BenCloward I mean the type with rich colors that can constantly change with the perspective. Imagine the color of the clothes having a bubble shader like effect before

[@avrahamrosenberg2905]

Hey btw if u ever make a masterclass course on shaders in ue5 il pay up to 300 dollars and im sure there's alot of people who will agree Ps have u ever considered making a lava shader that looks realistic

[@BenCloward]

In this GDC talk, I go over how to create lava as well as water and rain effects I created for Anthem: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5u0iIWgjL96pJI

[@avrahamrosenberg2905]

@@BenCloward thank u so much