UE4 Custom Textures & Materials

Step 1 

Download textures from www.textures.com.( you will need to make sure the textures are seamless.)

example of available textures

 Step 2

Open the texture in photoshop and go image > image size and change the size to 512 x 512

change image width and height

After doing this go to file> save as and call this brick_diff (or something similar but end it in diff as its a diffuse texture) then select the targa file type and select the 32 bit resolution.

 Step 3

Go to filter>3D and sect normal map to generate a normal map of the texture. ( you can change the settings in this menu but usually you can just leave it the way it is

generate normal map options

After you generate a normal map the you will go file>save as and call this one brick_nrm and save as targa.

Step 4

For this step you will need to open up unreal engine 4 and in the content browser you will want to create a new folder called "materials" and inside this folder create another folder called brick or something appropriate to the material you are using.

  Step 6

We now need to add the material itself and to do this you will need to click the Add new button ( the green button we used for the folders) and choose material. name the material "Brick_M" or something appropriate to the material and something you will understand. Double click on the material to open the material editor. drag and drop the textures you made earlier and connect them as demonstrated below.

After this just save the material and it can now be dragged and dropped onto any geometry surface in the level.

Now that we have this done we can make more materials and apply them to different materials to make interesting scenes. here is a quick 2 minute example of what can be done.