Deformation Material

A custom Deformation Material can be used to enhance the visual deformation.

Deformation without a Deformation Material

Deformation with a Deformation Material

Version 2.1

The template was optimized / refactored in version 2.1 and may vary a bit in previous versions.

We include a template material that you can use as a base or as inspiration. It's located here: /DeformableStaticMesh/Materials/Template:

info

You can also take a look at our example vehicle, which also has a custom deformation material. It's located here: /DeformableStaticMesh/Materials/Example/M_Deformable_TestVehicle

If you like video tutorials you may have a look at this tutorial. It was created using version 1.x but should still be relatively accurate:

Setup using the Template

1. You can either create a material instance of the template material or copy and customize the template and create a material instance of the copied material or add the "deformation logic" to your own materials (see Advanced / Custom Setup).
2. The material instance provides 5 configurable textures:
   
   • Base Textures (MANDATORY)
     • Base Color: This should be the base color texture that you already use in your standard material.
     • Metallic Roughness AO: This should be your metallic / roughness / ambient occlusion (MRA) texture.
     • Normal: This should be the normal texture that you already use in your standard material.
   • Deformation Textures
     • Damage Normal: Here you can insert custom deformation normals.
     • Scratch Base: Here you can insert a custom scratch mask. The scratch mask is the base color with scratches. You can create it e.g. with substance painter.
3. You can skip the next step if the static mesh has already been assigned the deformation materials.
   • Go to your Deformable Mesh Component and use your created Deformation Material(s) as Material Overrides:
     

warning

Make sure to supply as many materials as your static mesh needs! If the static mesh has 8 materials slots, then you should override all 8 materials! But you don't have to override all 8 materials with deformation materials - you can also just choose the original material here.

Advanced / Custom Setup

You can of course create a custom deformation material from scratch or extend an existing material instead of using the above template. You will have to evaluate the VertexColor's red channel which represents the current deformation of a given vertex. Here's a simple example of how to create scratches where deformation has taken place:

The sample principle can be applied to normals and everything else.