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Material Instance Definition - UE4 | Ecosystem and Plug-ins

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          3. Plugin Overview - UE5
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          5. Substance Input Image - UE5
          6. Material Instance Definition - UE5
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          12. Blueprints - UE5
            1. Blueprint(UE5): Substance material parameters
            2. Blueprint(UE5): Dynamic Material Instance Skip to end of metadata
            3. Blueprint(UE5): Aggregate Substance
            4. Blueprint(UE5): Node Reference
          13. Unreal Engine 5 Scripting
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          3. Plugin Overview - UE4
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          5. Substance Input Image - UE4
          6. Material Instance Definition - UE4
          7. Tiling Substance - UE4
          8. Working with Bump Offset (Parallax) - UE4
          9. Working with Displacement - UE4
          10. Source in UE4
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          12. Blueprints - UE4
            1. Blueprint(UE4): Substance material parameters
            2. Blueprint(UE4): Dynamic Material Instance
            3. Blueprint(UE4): Aggregate Substance
            4. Blueprint(UE4): Node Reference
          13. Unreal Engine 4 Scripting
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              1. SubstanceRuntimeGraph Class overview
              2. Member Function Documentation
              3. Detailed Description
        15. Scripting in Unity (Deprecated)
        16. API Overview
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        21. Substance 3D in Unity Tutorials
        22. Physical Size in Unity
        23. Sharing sbsar Files Between Projects
      3. Lumberyard
        1. Lumberyard overview
        2. Importing a Substance
        3. Assigning a Substance
        4. Parameters and outputs
        5. Flow Graph API
      4. Roblox
    3. 3D Applications
      1. Maya
        1. Maya Plugin Release Notes
          1. Maya 3.0.0+
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          19. Maya 0.9.11
        2. Substance in Maya Overview
        3. Installation
        4. Substance Output Node
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        11. Apply Workflow To Maps
        12. Maya Scripting
        13. Physical Size in Maya
      2. 3ds Max
        1. 3ds Max Plugin Release Notes
          1. 3ds Max 3.0.0+
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          10. 3ds Max 2.3.1
          11. 3ds Max 2.2.0
        2. Substance in 3ds Max Overview
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        4. Using Presets
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          1. Modo 2.7.3
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          4. Modo v. 2.7.3
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          6. Modo v. 2.7.1
          7. Modo v. 2.7.0
        3. Substance in MODO Overview
        4. Modo Installation
        5. Parameters
        6. Custom Materials
        7. Working with Normals
        8. Working with Emissive
        9. Bump and Displacement
        10. Working with References
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        12. Copy/Duplicate Substance
        13. Environment and Rendering Setup
        14. Modo Switch Engine
        15. Tiling Modo textures
      4. Cinema 4D
        1. Cinema 4D overview
        2. Set-Up
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      5. Houdini
      6. Blender
        1. Blender overview
        2. Release Notes
          1. Add-on 2.0.0+
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        12. Uninstalling the Add-on
        13. Substance 3D Add-on for Blender Tutorials
    4. Creative Cloud Applications
      1. Photoshop
    5. Renderers
      1. Converting Substance outputs
      2. Color Management
        1. Color Management overview
        2. Substance textures in Maya
        3. Substance textures in 3ds Max
      3. Arnold
        1. Arnold overview
        2. Arnold - Substance in 3ds Max
        3. Arnold - Substance in Maya
        4. Arnold - Substance Painter
      4. Vray
        1. Vray overview
        2. Vray Next - Substance in Maya
        3. Vray Next - Substance in 3ds Max
        4. Vray Next - Substance Painter
      5. Renderman
        1. Renderman overview
        2. Renderman for Maya
        3. Renderman - Substance Painter
      6. Redshift
        1. Redshift overview
        2. Redshift for 3ds Max
        3. Redshift for Maya
        4. Redshift - Substance Painter
      7. Maxwell
        1. Maxwell overview
        2. Maxwell - Substance in Maya
        3. Maxwell - Substance Painter
      8. Corona
        1. Corona overview
        2. Corona for 3ds Max
        3. Corona - Substance Painter
      9. Octane
        1. Octane overview
        2. Octane for 3ds Max
        3. Octane for MODO
      10. Keyshot
      11. Thea
      12. Maverick
        1. Maverick overview
        2. Substance Painter Integration
        3. Substance SBSAR Integration
      13. Toolbag
      14. Cycles and Eevee
        1. Cycles and Eevee overview
        2. Cycles and Eevee - Substance 3D for Blender
        3. Cycles and Eevee - Susbtance Painter
    6. Partnerships
      1. Substance 3D and Maxon One
      2. Substance 3D and Maxon One FAQ

Material Instance Definition - UE4

You can use UE4 Material Instances with Substances. This will save a large step in the GPU rendering process by not uploading a new material to process. An MID can be created at runtime or in the editor. With version 4.24.0.3, we added full support for material instancing and introduces a new material template workflow with numeric outputs supported by the Substance Engine. Material templates allow you to define exactly how you want to configure your Substance material shaders in UE4.

When you import a sbsar file, you can choose which template you want to work with.

We ship with templates for working with displacement, refraction and world aligned materials that have built in controls for adjusting tiling, texture size, displacement and emissive parameters. The material template system also allows you to supply your own custom templates.

Creating a Material Instance in the editor

  1. Right-click on the substance created UE4 material and choose "Create Material Instance." This creates a UE4 Instanced material.

  2. Right-click the substance instance factory and choose "Create a graph instance." This will create an instance of the graph and create another UE4 material. Delete the newly created UE4 material as this will not be used.

  3. Double click the material instance you created in step 1 and enable the Texture parameters for all of the maps.

  4. Set the texture to the new INST texture that was created from step 2. This will set the material instance to use the substance output maps from the instanced graph.

You now have a UE4 material instance that is using specific set of substance textures. This is a more optimized way of working with multiple substances in a UE4 project. To learn how to create an MID using blueprint, please check this page. Blueprint(UE4): Dynamic Material Instance

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