I thought materials in Unreal Engine were just about colors. I was wrong. They’re more about logic than visuals.

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🎮 Learning Game Development – Day 6

This post is part of my daily learning journey in game design and game development.
I’m sharing what I learn each day — the basics, the confusion, and the real progress.

On Day 6, I learned how to create materials in Unreal Engine 5, including a basic Glass Material.

Instead of blindly copying tutorials, I did something different today. I wrote everything down in my diary — step by step — to understand what each node actually does.

That mindset alone changed how I look at materials.

🧱 Creating a Basic Material in UE5

First, I learned the basic material workflow.

What I did:

Downloaded textures or created a new material in the Content Browser.
Opened the material by double-clicking it.
Explored the Details panel to understand material settings.

Then I started working with nodes:

Texture Coordinate
Scalar Parameter
Multiply

By connecting the Texture Coordinate and Scalar Parameter into Multiply,
I learned how to control texture tiling and scale instead of hard-coding values.

After that, I connected textures to:

Base Color
Normal
Roughness
Ambient Occlusion

Depending on what the material needed.Later, I used Material Attributes and created a Material Instance, which allowed me to tweak values easily without touching the main material again. That felt powerful.