{"id":1163,"date":"2025-09-26T18:28:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T22:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/willkolb.com\/?p=1163"},"modified":"2025-09-26T18:28:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T22:28:04","slug":"how-not-to-use-materials-in-unreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willkolb.com\/?p=1163","title":{"rendered":"How (Not) to use materials in unreal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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hell yeah<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The borderlands 4 issues with unreal (see: https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/games\/fps\/borderlands-4s-latest-patch-triggers-a-flurry-of-performance-complaints-but-gearbox-says-new-stuttering-problems-should-resolve-over-time-as-the-shaders-continue-to-compile\/<\/a> ) made me realize I was doing all of my materials wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally the way I pulled in 3d meshes generated a material of each slot in the mesh. So I thougth I was being clever by using material slots to determine colors (so I didn’t have to texture paint), however the issue above made me actual look into things. So I was taking materials for granted as things that were inherent to unreal, however materials themselves are nothing more than giant HLSL files (see https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/High-Level_Shader_Language<\/a>). This means that every material I made has to be complied for whatever graphics hardware the user is using (which is the borderlands 4 problem from the article above.) The solution is to use material instances (see https:\/\/dev.epicgames.com\/documentation\/en-us\/unreal-engine\/creating-and-using-material-instances-in-unreal-engine<\/a>)! These are parameterized unreal materials which allow for the developer to expose parameters into compiled base materials so we dont have to deal with as much shader compiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sooo from just imports and optimized development had 30-40 plus materials which would come from asset imports, most I could categorize into:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Painted Metal
-Exposed Metal
-Wood
-Plastic
-Rubber
-Concrete
-Brick
-Glass
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So instead of 30-40 compilations for all of the materials I could whiddle things down to 8 compilations to save myself from making the user wait with no colors on their screen. After 30 painstaking minutes I was able to remove all other materials (minus a few specialized ones) to the 8 materials above and instances thereof. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now things look a little shinier and more visually consistent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The side effect that I wasn’t expecting is that the game is now BLAZING FAST. I went from around 60-70 fps on light load and 40-50 on heavy load on average to pretty much locking to 120fps in light load and 80fps in high load. I had plans to re-write how I handle some of the animation data transferring but I’m thinking now that might not be needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also did some work on the ai so they stayed a bit more mobile. I also added recoil to the bots<\/p>\n\n\n\n