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Layered Material

layered material - header

A modular Unreal Engine 5 material built using the Material Layer system, designed for flexible multi-layer blending and advanced surface control. Fully compatible with Nanite, tessellation, and displacement workflows.

This layered material was developed to provide environment and material artists with a scalable, production-ready foundation for complex surface creation in Unreal Engine 5. It allows for intuitive control over each layer’s blending, tiling, and projection behavior, whether blending ground materials, architectural surfaces, or hard-surface detail, all without the need to rebuild the base shader.

toggling the layers in a layered material

Features

  • The material is built using Unreal Engine’s material layer system, so it scales easily.

adding new layers

  • Each layer has its own sets of parameters.

layer parameters

  • The layers can be blended using height maps, custom masks, or both!

separate height and mask blending parameters

height-blending

with & without mask

  • What we can do with the layers:
    • swap them and change their order.
    • hide and unhide them.
    • delete them.

hiding & unhiding layers

deleting layers

  • Fully set up for nanite tessellation and displacement.
layered material - no displacement layered material - with displacement

before & after displacement

  • Parameters to control how each material looks and feels.

lookdev parameters

  • parameters to control how each layer blends with the layers below.
height-blend parameters

height-blend parameters

  • The custom mask option:
    • can be used to break tilling repetitions.
    • can be used to art direct details and put them exactly where we want to.
layered material - no mask layered material - with mask

before & after using a custom mask (the repetition is gone)

layered material - custom mask

use custom masks to add detail to the mesh

  • Supports both ORDp and ORM textures.
ORM ORDp toggle

switch between ORM & ORDp textures

  • Parameters to adjust scaling and offset for each material separately.
uv parameters

UV parameters

  • Tri-planar support with:
    • Switchable world/local space.
    • Switchable cheap/expensive mode.

toggle tri-planar projection per material

tri-planar projection controls

world space vs. local space triplanar

cheap triplanar expensive triplanar

cheap (1 texture lookup per texture) & expensive (3 texture lookups per texture)

Development Notes

  • Optimized for flexibility across projects and all UE5 versions.
  • Organized material graph and commented section to avoid confusion.
  • Layer logic modularized into reusable Material Layer and Material Layer Blend assets to reduce graph complexity and improve performance.
  • Reusable custom made material functions to avoid cluttering the material graph.
  • Cleanly grouped parameters for quick iteration and lookdev.
  • Developed with modularity and clarity for teams in mind.
  • Tuned for balance between visual fidelity and runtime performance using optimized blend operations and tri-planar sampling.
  • Developed with production efficiency, readability, and long-term maintainability as top priorities.
material layer graph

the material layer graph

the material layer blend graph

the material functions used in this master material

organized parameters

organized parameters for ease of use

My Tutorials on This Subject

Seeking a Full-Time Studio Position

I am actively seeking a full-time role as a “Technical Artist”, where I can contribute my skills in Unreal Engine material design and procedural tooling to a dedicated team.

If my work aligns with your studio’s needs, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss how I can add value to your projects.

Let’s Connect: