Getting ready

We've included a small scene that you can use as a starting point for this recipe – its name is 03_01_ComplexShader_Start, and it includes all of the basic assets that you will need to follow along. As you'll be able to see for yourself, there's a small toy tank that has two UV channels in the center of the level. The first of those channels is the one that Unreal uses by default to understand how it needs to place the textures that we feed to the material the model is using, while the second one is used to generate the lightmaps.

As always, feel free to use your own 3D models and populate your scenes however you like. Something to take into consideration is the need to have well-laid-out UVs, as we are going to be masking certain areas of our models to drive the look of our materials. Make sure that your custom assets follow that rule, as we'll need that to be true for this recipe to work: