>>Galen: Hey, guys. Thanks so much for joining
the Learning Theater today. My name is Galen from
Quixel at Epic. And today, we're going to
be doing a full ecosystem walkthrough of everything
that's available to you as an Unreal Engine user. I'm going to be using this
scene that my colleague, Isaac Crawford, actually created
as the vessel for all the information today, and
it's available for download in the Marketplace. So we'll put a link
for that down below. We'll be going through Bridge,
Mixer, and a couple other tips and techniques for
working with Megascans inside of Unreal Engine. So let's go ahead and jump in. So if you aren't familiar
with the Megascan's ecosystem, this is Quixel Bridge. And a Quixel Bridge is a
content management solution. And what I'm going
to do just to start is log in using my Epic ID. And after I go ahead and accept
and enter my credentials, I'll go and click Allow. And now as an
Unreal Engine user, I have full and complete
access to the entire Megascans library. So this means that every single
day as the library continues to expand, I can download
the highest resolution versions of these assets and
just use them immediately in the scenes that
I'm creating at home. So as you can see here,
you can browse the library in a couple of different ways. And here I'm just
going through a couple of different collections and
using some basic search terms to isolate what it is
that I'm looking at. And as you can see,
there's a wide variety of different asset types here. Be it 3D assets, surfaces,
decals, atlases, and everything you could possibly need in
order to assemble the worlds that you're creating. I'm also able to browse
each individual asset here in being able to isolate
the individual channels, be it albedo, roughness, normal. And I can also 3D
preview any asset here. And I can also view the
wireframe here as well for each individual LOD. As you can see here, we're given
a couple download settings. And we'll be using
Unreal Engine, obviously, for this example. So I'll be using that
material preset for anything I'm going to be
downloading today. So as you can see, I
can actually go in here and customize this
experience a lot. I can have each
individual LOD depending on the needs of my project. And I can use the Cinematic
High Master Mesh in the event that I'm going to be using this
for maybe a high end cinematic. You also have access to Global
Download Settings here where if I want to go and download
an entire Eco-region, I can set all the
parameters for my downloads and then just indicate
on a per asset basis what it is I'm
looking to download. Let's start by installing the
plugin for Unreal Engine. And what I'll do here
is just for any asset that I have
downloaded, I'll just go to my Export Settings tab. And as you can see, we'll
be using Unreal Engine as the target for our export. Now, we do support a wide
variety of different DCCs and renderers, so
it's important to know you can view all of the
documentation for this just in our Help tab. Installing the Live Link
is incredibly simple and all you need to do is
make sure, with the Unreal Engine closed, that you go
and download the plugin from this tab below. After downloading the
plugin, you simply need to indicate where
Unreal is actually installed in your machine. I'll tab on my machine to C,
Program Files, Epic Games, and drill down to
the Plugins folder, as this is where we're
going to be nesting the plugin for our use. After indicating where
the plugins folder is, you can see at the
top of the UI we're actually getting
a flag from Bridge that indicates that the plugin
was successfully installed. And lastly, I'll
just find the project that I'm going to be
working inside today. Quickly before we export, we
can go to our Advanced Settings here, and if I want
to make any changes to the names of the assets
as they're going into Unreal Engine I can do that here. We also have channel
packing which allows me to customize
my experience even more and optimize my
shaders and engine. If you have a specific
setup in mind, you can do that here
inside of this tab. So let's find some assets to
actually go ahead and export into our scene. And I'm just going to
go through and start to browse here briefly. And the scene, as you
saw at the beginning, is kind of an abandoned
apartment of sorts. And we really want to
clutter this thing up and add in a couple
different pieces that might give us some variety
in the set dressing. Again, I can sort and preview
all different types of assets here in Bridge-- be it
surfaces, 3D assets, scatter, and I can go and filter by a
ton of different parameters here at the top of the UI. I think this old metal
pot is perfect for what I'm looking for,
so I'm going to make sure I have a couple
different LODs checked on just to make sure that we're
keeping performance top of mind for this example. And I'll just be using
JPEGs here for this example. So as long as we have the Unreal
Engine material presets setup, I'll just go and
click download here and we can see the
progress in screen ahead. After I reopen Unreal Engine,
you'll see at the top of the UI we have the Megascans
plugin, actually, right between Settings
and Blueprints. This just shows to
me that the plugin was successfully installed. So why don't we take a
look at the UI briefly? As you can see, there
are a couple of features here for overwriting
materials, in case you're using your own master
material for your project. It's important to note
that we actually do ship with master materials for a
wide variety of different asset types, but we do understand
that various projects do have specific needs. And this plugin allows you
to customize that experience fully. Let's bring our metal pot
into Unreal Engine now. And just with a
single click, I'll click Export into our project. As you can see, Unreal
Engine is bringing in all the important information
from what we downloaded, and it's assembling material
instances and the LOD chains for the asset
that we just downloaded. And as you can see,
here's our metal pot. And we can start to
inspect it briefly before we start actually
including in our scene. Let's go ahead and
drag it in now. And that's how easy
it is to just start being creative immediately
with the Megascans library. Performance is a massive
consideration when we're working in real-time. So as you can see
here, I've actually brought in the several
different LOD levels that I can actually flip
between here inside of my scene. At a minimum, Megascan's assets
are LODed through LOD 5, but some actually extend
that chain further. And like I mentioned, the
Cinematic High Master Mesh is our gold standard
for anything that's going to be able to
withstand high polycounts. And here's the
material instance that was automatically created when
we exported it from Bridge. Our material instance comes
with a couple simple features, but it's important to note that
you can, again, customize this as much as you would like. I'll go in and start to
make some simple adjustments to the albedo. Maybe feather the
roughness slightly to where we get
something a little bit different from what we
were looking at before. Megascans assets are
meticulously calibrated, but it's important that
after you bring these assets into your scene that
you have that control to dial it in for the project
that you're working inside. Let's inspect the
Master Material that ships with our plugin. So as you can see, it's a
very simple material setup. Not really anything
too complicated. But it's a good
starting place if you're a new user to Unreal Engine. Let's make a simple
modification to this material, as I want to maybe be able to
desaturate this asset once I actually drag it into my seen. I'll hold down D on the keyboard
to bring in a desaturation node, and hold down 1
to bring in a constant. After I convert
that to a parameter, let's feed this back
into base color. And this is something
that will be exposed now in the material
instance for the asset that we were just looking at. And there we go. I can just desaturate this and
bring it right into the zone that I want to for my purposes. Let's take a look
at some other asset types that were incredibly
useful in building this scene. As we mentioned before,
3D assets and surfaces are some of the most prevalent
assets in the library. Though we have some
amazing decals and atlases that would be perfect
for this scene. I'll type in leak and decals
as my search parameters, and let's go ahead and
see what the library has. Again, I can view the trending
assets here in Bridge, as well as see some of the
latest updates that have come in for this asset type. Isaac used a lot
of these in order to create that weathered look on
the walls for this environment. So why don't we
bring in one of those now and see if we
can't weather up some of the walls in this scene. And here's the material
instance that we're using for this specific
example of the decal. I've already sized
up the detail here, so I'm just going to
drag it into place and find an area
where I think it would work for this specific wall. And we can also go in and start
to adjust the roughness here in case I want to
maybe have it look like water has been pouring
down the side of this wall. And of course, we'll
dial in the albedo here slightly to where we get
the exact color that we're going for. Creating material blends
is incredibly simple here with the Megascans plugin. So what I'll show
real quick is just being able to select a couple
different material instances. In this case I'll select
these three assets, and select the Create
Material Blend button with the Megascans plugin. If I go back into
my Content Browser and I find the Blend Materials
folder that's been created, I'll find a new
material type here that the plugin
automatically created for me. Isaac has already done a great
job of painting this thing up, but why don't we make some
simple adjustments here so you guys can see the
functionality of the existing material. As you can see, I'm just
painting on a per vertex level here in my Modes tab. All the channels that
we're looking at, be it red, green, blue,
or the alpha channel all store information
on a per vertex level where we can
go in and actually paint in various materials. We're only blending on
a per vertex level here just to keep the math
pretty simple for this, but it's important to
note that you can actually go in and customize
this even further. If you wanted to
maybe have noise go in and break up the way that
the transition happens between materials,
that's something that's entirely possible. And again, this is just
a very simple material, but you're given a whole
slew of different parameters to play with to dial in
the look of exactly what it is that you're building. So I can affect my roughness,
my normal intensity, or maybe I want to affect
the tiling to where I get the texel
density that I'm looking for on this surface. These are just a couple
of the basic techniques that Isaac was using in order to
create this very weathered look for this environment. We also have a World Align
Blend feature for this material. And this will allow
you to pair up a surface and a 3D
asset in the event that you might want, maybe,
sand or snow to accumulate on the up vector of a surface. Let's take a look at some of
the vegetation in this scene, as this is one of the most
realistic elements that made up this environment. Our foliage material, again,
is very basic in nature, but does allow you to have
a huge amount of control to dial in the specific
look of the vegetation that you're working with. Whether you want
some color variation on a per instance
basis or if you want to affect the
subsurface scattering, this is all available
inside the shader. We've also added
some simple winds, and this will allow you to
add in some subtle realism if you have a wind actor
in your environment. I know that Isaac added in
some very subtle movements to this scene and
it really made it just that much more
realistic in the renders. And again, here's
the Master Material that we're using for
the foliage which can totally be customized for
your purposes after the fact. Our vegetation team is one
of the most talented groups of people I've ever worked with. And you can see the
attention to detail in all the scans that come
out of our vegetation side. Creating realistic
vegetation is one of the most complicated
parts of being an artist. And with a wide breadth
of vegetation actors inside the Megascans
ecosystem, you can really skip all
of the guesswork in crafting some of the most
complicated assets for CG artists. Let's jump into
Quixel Mixer now. Mixer is a standalone
3D painting application that will allow you to
leverage the entire Megascans library and bring in
your own custom assets, as well as retexture
any Megascans asset you can imagine. It's a non-destructive
workflow with a zero learning curve approach to
the user experience. We have a huge amount of
training content on our YouTube channel specifically
for this application. So if you're interested in
mixing new surfaces or some of the more advanced
techniques for 3D painting, definitely be sure to check
out our YouTube channel. And with Mixer 2020, we've
made some massive improvements to this application. The first obviously
being 3D functionality. Being able to bring in
your own assets and texture them in this application
is just a breeze. And again, having the full Megascans
library at my fingertips just makes this such an
enjoyable process. You truly are able to
create endless variations of these different asset types. And with the dozens of smart
materials that we ship with, you can quickly texture
an asset just in seconds. Mixing surfaces has
never been easier. And in an always-tiling environment, you're able to bring in
your own custom assets, paint across seams
non destructively, and again, leverage
everything in the Megascans library to craft
something completely new. We also have some procedural
features inside of Mixer that just give you even
more flexibility for some of the assets you might
be looking to create. And with a fully
revamped mask stack, the user experience has
become even more deep while still maintaining a very
simplistic approach to material authoring. And with full smart
material functionality, you could retexture an
entire Eco-region in seconds. So let's jump into our
first example here. And the idea is really
simple for this specific demo in that I want to ground
this asset a little bit more than if I were just to drag
in this clean cardboard box directly into my old
abandoned environment. Before we start to weather
this thing a little bit, why don't we take a look
at some of the things you can do just out of the box? On a per-channel
basis, we've added blending modes that will allow
you to blend and mix and match all the different inputs that
you might layer into a stack. Opacity and contrast have also
been given their own sliders in the event that we might want
to feather the effect of maybe just the albedo, for example. Browsing inside of Mixer
is very similar to that of browsing inside of Bridge. So we're given the full
Megascans library here, as you can see. but we can
search in the exact same way. So if I want to maybe isolate
just a surface as my category type but then type in a
couple simple keywords, I can see everything
that's available to me that I can start to just
mix and match from my scene. I know that I want to start
with some simple paper, and what I'll do here is just
find a nice crinkly material that I think would make
this just a little bit more weathered than it is. I'm able to go in here and
make some modifications to my, albedo but I can also middle
click on the swatch next to albedo and this
will actually average the values of everything
that's sitting below it. You can obviously
punch in hex values and use the eyedropper
sample if there's something specific
in your environment that you want to sample. Toggling certain layers
is also incredibly powerful in that you can go
in and be able to very quickly just bring in maybe
normal information from a specific surface. And I'm going to make some
modifications to the roughness here as well, as we want
this to feel a little damp. Maybe like it's been sitting
there for a long time. Let's continue to weather
this box a little bit more. And I know that I
have some cardboard materials in my
library, so why don't we bring in just a simple cardboard
material on the surface? We've added in
Hexaplanar Projection into Mixer 2020, which allows
us to very quickly change the projection methods for
the specific asset type. I'm given a radial
slider on the side here, which will allow me to
affect the way this material is actually projected on the
surface of this 3D asset. I can also change it to a
tiling method if I would like, and this just allows me
to have the surface adhere to UV seams, as opposed to
the Hexaplanar Projection. Affecting the scale
of the projection is something that will be really
useful in dialing in the look that I'm going for. Now, I don't want
this effect to be completely uniform
across this entire asset. So what I think I'll do is I'll
actually maybe have this only be affected from the top down. And now we're able to
isolate on a per-channel basis some of these individual
inputs, why don't we dial down the normal
intensity just slightly? And I don't want this effect
to be completely uniform across the surface, so why
don't we have this be something that might have a gradient? If I add in a mask
component on the side here, I can add in a
position gradient, which will allow me to feather
this effect from top to bottom. Adjusting the
range will actually increase the sharpness
of that fall off. And I can also change the
way this position is actually affecting either displacement
or the mesh itself. Let's bring in
some moss now, as I think some moss might
have accumulated on the bottom of this surface
if it had been left there for a long time. And I'll just adjust
the scale here slightly to where I get the exact
scale of this material that I'm looking for. Once again, adding
in a mask stack, I'll go to my position
gradient and invert it so that I can actually get
this just to come from below. All right, so I think this
is looking really cool. But one of the things
that I don't like is just how uniform that
position gradient is. So why don't we break up
that edge a little bit here? As I mentioned before, we have
some procedural components inside of Mixer
that will give us a lot of flexibility in solving
problems just like this one. I'll add in this perlin noise. And what I'm going to do is
just affect the frequency and the amplitude here to
where I get a nice uniform look here that will break up
that surface a little bit more than what we have. I'll also need to add in
a projection modifier. As this is a 3D asset, I do
want the seams to be corrected. This takes a little bit of
adjusting and playing with, so I'll just go ahead
and get it to a point to where I feel like
it's looking pretty good and start to mess around in some
different projection methods just to see the different looks. And after I mess around with
all these different effects, I'll kind of get it
to a place that I like and then add in a blend mode. In this case I'll
be using Multiply, as I want this effect to be
multiplied onto the gradient that we already put down below. And as you can see,
this just breaks up that surface a lot
more to where we're getting something that
just looks a little bit more natural than what we had. And on top of blending
modes, we obviously have an opacity
slider that will just allow you to really dial it in. Solid layers are incredibly
useful for projects like this in that I can
isolate individual inputs that will allow me just to create
something entirely new. So in this case, I want
maybe a soft gradient of maybe some moisture
that's, again, collected from the bottom of the box. So I'll just add
in a solid here. And then with my
mask stack, I'll in and add in that
position gradient as we did before, turn
off my albedo and maybe some of other inputs,
and then make it to where we have a nice
gradient of moisture that's accumulating from the bottom. Playing with various
blending modes here will really dial it in. So let's just find
something that we like. You can also go in and
preview masks as well as each individual map
input just by going through the individual
number keys. Let's pull the moss
a little bit more into the range of what we just
added in for our gradient, and then we'll move
on to our next piece. As we mentioned earlier,
decals and atlases are some of the most
powerful assets that we have here in the library. We've got some
pretty unique stuff, be it some tiling inputs
that might scatter just some simple rocks or twigs
and leaves on the surface, or if we want we can grab
some of these more one off type pieces like this
cardboard and tape asset. If I switch my projection
method to free form, then I can go and actually
offset this in x and y, as well as rotate
or scale the asset appropriately for my purposes. I kind of like where that
ones sitting, but let's add in another one here. I really like this
one as it's just like another piece
of cardboard that maybe has been taped on the
top to repair some damage. And again, we'll just scale
this appropriately to where we get it somewhere that we like. And again, I can dial in
the roughness and the albedo here to where we're
getting something that actually fits exactly for
what it is that we have below. And the last thing
I'm going to do here is maybe rough up
the edges slightly. So I'll just add
in another solid here and bring it into a range
that I think would be nice. So in this case,
it's going to be a little bit more
desaturated from what we were working with before. And I'll add in the mask stack,
and curvature is actually the input that we're going
to be using for this example. So this is real-time
curvature, and this will allow me to just make some
simple adjustments to the way that the curvature is actually
affecting the surfaces below. I can either have it rely
entirely on the underlying mix, or I can have it just
adhere to the mesh itself. I like a lot of the
crinkly elements that we've added with some of
the paper assets down below, so why don't we just
play with the levels until we get something that
we think would work for just beating up the edges slightly? There's also an anti-aliasing
and soft mesh option here on the side, and that will just
allow you to really customize the experience based on
the mesh that you're using. So in dialing in this
effect I'm going back through all my
individual layers, be it the albedo channel,
the roughness, and really just trying to find
something that I think works well with the different blending
modes that I have available here. Originally, I was looking
at something that maybe was a little bit more saturated. But I landed here on maybe
just a simple multiply, and I think that that
gives me the exact effect that I was going for. And again, we have full channel
packing functionality inside of Mixer, so if you
want to have a more customized experience on
export, you can do that as well. And here's our asset
directly into our scene. I think that this just works way
better than what we had before. We've got a nice
grounded feel to it. And again, once I'm actually
inside of the level, I can go in and start
to adjust, again, maybe the albedo
or the roughness to where it just fits with
some of the other assets that are around it. Well, this was just a
really quick preview of the Megascans ecosystem. And like I mentioned at
the beginning of the video, I really encourage everyone to go over to our YouTube
page where we have extensive learning materials. Whether you want a deep dive
into what we have for Bridge, or you want to go through entire
asset pipelines with Mixer, we have all these
videos available. We'll be continuing to offer all
of these different environments that you're seeing
here for these examples available on the Marketplace
for free for all Unreal Engine users. So definitely keep your eyes
peeled on the Marketplace as we'll be uploading a lot of
content over the coming months. And as always, we'd love to
hear what our community wants as far as learning materials. So definitely feel free
to drop as a comment below if you have any suggestions
about future tutorials. Thank you guys so much
for watching today. If you haven't already,
make sure to check out some of our other Learning
Theater presentations that are available
on the channel. And we'll see you
guys on the next one.
This looks amazing! I had to watch the video with sound off because I have my daughter sleeping next to me, but did they mention anything about restraints about using these assets in game? I would guess these textures would be very taxing on the system which is what has kept it out of modern games so far. I wonder if the new technology in UE5 would help bring these Megascans into higher use within next generation games.