Learn Displacement and Parallax Mapping for UE4

In this course we'll be looking at the various ways of displacing textures within UE4. We will then discuss in detail the pros and cons of each method and the best ways they can be utilised for a video game environments.

Once we understand the various methods used we will begin the creation process starting with the Height maps. we'll cover the different methods of creating height maps and the different software available for creating them which will include; using a high to low poly workflow for height maps, creating height maps in photoshop and also generating height maps from images using software like Knald, Crazy Bump and xNormal.

After creating our height maps, we'll cover in detail how to create the individual displacement materials in UE4 which will include; bump offset materials, parallax occlusion materials and tessellation. We'll also walk through each node used in detail and cover ways we can set up an instanced material so that we can edit our displacement material real time in-engine.

By the end of the course, you will have a better understanding of the nodes available in the UE4 material editor and be able to utilise them to create much more realistic materials for your video game environments.

(Students - please look under Section 1 / Lecture 1 downloads for the source files associated with the lesson.)

More about the Instructor:

Ash Thundercliffe has been in the games industry for 3 years now. He started his career teaching at the University of Derby on the Computer games Modeling and Animation Course. After doing this for several months, he moved on to small indie projects as an environment artist for the mobile and PC platform utilising Unity and UDK.

After spending a year teaching and working on indie projects, Ash moved into AAA games working at Rockstar Games as a Technical Content Artist for almost 2 years. Ash has since moved back into freelance and continue to work as an environment artist.