Lead Technical Environment Artist Ryan Honey, whom we interviewed a couple of years ago, is currently delving into Material Layers for his upcoming environment piece and shared how Substance 3Ds baked masks are simplifying the process. Rather than manually painting wear and grime, Ryan leverages Curvature, AO, and Edge masks to create effects like edge wear, dirt buildup, and rust in Unreal Engine.His key takeaway is that custom textures arent always necessary: smart masks allow materials to stand out while maintaining consistency across assets. This approach helps save texture memory and reduces production time, ensuring materials are both efficient and high-quality.If youre new to Unreal Engine 5 and want to get started with Material Layers, we recommend watching this detailed video from Sumo Digital. It covers the benefits of this feature and provides helpful use case examples:Also, check out Ryans most recent project called Offworld, a high-quality sci-fiasset pack for Unreal Engine 5, featuring customizable environment-building pieces, rain VFX, and more:Follow him on LinkedIn for more and dont forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us onInstagram,Twitter,LinkedIn,Telegram,TikTok, andThreads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.Source link The post Combining Unreal Engine 5s Material Layers With Substance 3Ds Baked Masks appeared first on CG SHARES.