act like you know [Music] hey y'all today we're going to learn how to use material editor in effect house material editor is a powerful node-based creation tool that allows you to build and manipulate materials ranging from simple color modifications to intricate textures and finishes with material editor you can create materials ranging in appearance from hyper realistic wood to blocky cartoons you can also use material Editor to create post-process materials that make your camera feed look super pixelated the possibilities are as endless as your imagination so get ready to materialize your ideas as we show you
how to use this Nifty feature like visual scripting material editor is a node-based creation tool that lets you string together nodes with flows of logic to achieve your desired result today I'm going to show you how to create a custom material that you can apply to the 3D hair model in the dynamic chain template first let's find the dynamic chain template we want to use and then open it we're using this template because it has a cool 3D hair model that we can apply a new material to with neat results after the template loads click
on the hair object in the scene panel you'll notice that there are two pieces of hair in the front that both use the preset template material called hair mat we're going to use material Editor to create our own material and replace it of course affect house has built-in materials that you can add from the assets panel but material editor has the advantage of allowing you to build materials completely from scratch giving you full control over the final result so to create a new material click on the add button in the assets panel hover over material
graph and then select empty material graph this opens up the material editor in the same space as the visual scripting panel you can switch between these panels by clicking on the tabs you can also rename your material so let's call ours new metallic material since we eventually want to create metallic looking hair alright so you've probably already noticed that material editor looks pretty similar to visual scripting they are similar in the sense that material editor also uses nodes with inputs and outputs to create flows of logic you add a node in material editor you can
click on the add button or right click on the panel and select add node or simply double-click anywhere on the panel for our new material we're going to go to material mode and select the standard PBR shading model there are several different material modes to choose from but we're choosing standard PBR because it uses physics based rendering to create a realistic response to light next we'll link the standard PBR node's color output to the Shader nodes color input which creates a generic standard PBR material this Shader node controls what the material looks like with your
configured lighting conditions since we have a basic material created we can apply it to our hair all you need to do is click on the hair object click on the material field in the inspector panel and then choose the new material foreign material as our base the hair responds realistically to Environmental Lighting like when you play around with the scene's lighting now let's get into the fun part one of the cool things about material editor is that you can use nodes to customize the materials properties when we click on the new material in the assets
panel we'll notice that it doesn't have many properties yet as we continue to add new properties to our material they show up in the inspector panel let's change the base color of the material using the Albedo input to do so I can click on the my items button then I can click on the add button next to parameter and then select color to add this color parameter as a node I can simply click on the plus sign next to it nice however you'll notice that when I try to connect the color parameter node to the
Albedo input the line turns red this is because the color outputs data type doesn't match the Albedo inputs data type that means I need to convert the color parameters data type to match the Albedo input using a node called cast right now the cast node is converting the colored data into a number which is not what we want since Albedo is made up of X Y and Z values to fix this we can click on the cast node click on the details button and then change the cache type to vector 3. now we can connect
the cast node to the Albedo input you'll notice that when we do so a color property shows up in the inspector panel I'll go ahead and choose a color now let's add parameters to the remaining inputs our hair doesn't look metallic yet since we haven't set up the metallic and roughness properties which are the two key factors to creating a metallic appearance so we'll click on the my items button and add a float parameter which is basically just a number that has a decimal point to match the data type of the metallic input I'll rename
this to metallic add the node and then connect it to its respective input we'll see the metallic properties show up in the inspector panel so we can change its value to 1 which corresponds to a shiny metallic appearance next we'll add another float parameter name it roughness add the node and then connect it to the roughness input which defines the surface texture as you play around with the roughness value in the inspector panel you'll notice how it affects the reflectivity of the material we'll go with the value of 0.2 which is not too shiny but
not too dull and there you have it you've just created your first custom material keep in mind that the possibilities for customization are endless you can make materials that look like wood or plastic simply by adjusting the metallic and roughness properties here's an advanced tip you can also use textures instead of color as an input to Albedo let me demonstrate all you got to do is add a sample texture 2D node and connect it to the alvido input next you can add a texture 2D parameter let's name this one texture based color then just add
the node and connect it to the texture 2D input next you can just connect the sample textures RGB Vector output to the Albedo input now you have a texture based property that allows you to use a texture as your base color I'll just use one of the templates pre-made textures here and that's all you need to do now that we've covered the basics of creating a customizable material let's go one step further and use visual scripting to make our material Interactive let's say we want to gradually make the hair change color after a person Taps
on the screen first I'll need to connect the color parameter back to the Albedo input then I'll go to the visual scripting panel and then add our materials set color variable from the inspector panel then I'll add a finger touch one point node to represent tapping on the screen now I need a node to control the change in color over a short period of time like three seconds so I'll go ahead and add the transit by time node change the type to color and then modify what we want the color to change into then we'll
Define a duration of three seconds all that's left to do is connect the nodes we'll make the finger touch start the transition and then connect the transit node to the set color variable foreign [Music] I'll see the material change color over the course of three seconds now you know how to use material Editor to build custom materials from scratch and make them interactive using visual scripted custom materials aren't just limited to 3D models you can also use material Editor to create post-process materials that modify your camera output from metallic hair to camera filter effects the
possibilities are endless remember to experiment and have fun for more information about material editor be sure to check out our documentation at effecthouse.ticktock.com [Music]
