Foliage Materials

M_Trees (Leaves)

M_Trees (Bark)

M_Plants

M_WaterPlants

Wind and Interaction animations

are handled by our Master Materials

We provide several master materials for different foliage appearance and behavior. All our assets are opaque due to poor Unreal Engine 5 opacity and masking performance, especially combined with nanite meshes. 

Please note that our master materials will only work with our meshes. We are doing complex preprocessing and packing all necessary data within meshes. Plants with complex hierarchy are also using "PivotPainter" textures combined with custom data. Without this data our materials are useless.

M_Trees

M_Trees is used for bigger foliage, consisting of up to 4 hierarchy levels, like trunks, 2 branch levels and leaves (trees, bushes, etc.) It allows to hide textures seams, when used with bark.

Material is located at "/EasyBiomes/Materials/Master". Note that some parameters are only exposed with different parameter combinations (like enabling Leaves checkbox also exposes Leaves Base Color, Normal, etc.) All parameters are exposed in this article for demonstration convenience.

M_Trees

  • AO Base Color - diffuse portion of AO.

  • AO SSS - SSS portion of AO.

Ambient Occlusion

  • Tint - toggles tint usage.

  • Tint Backside - toggles leaves backside tint usage.

  • Tint A - tint color A used for per plant random tint.

  • Tint B - tint color B used for per plant random tint.

  • Tint Backside - leaves backside tint color.

  • Tint SSS - global SSS tint.

Colorize

  • Leaves - toggles material to be used with trunks or leaves,

    also hides/exposes leaves and trunks related parameters

  • Base Color, Normal, SSS (alpha - roughness) - textures used with leaves.

  • Base Color - diffuse brightness.

  • Subsurface - translucency brightness (leaves only).

  • Bark_BaseColor (alpha - heightmap), Bark_Normal (alpha - roughness) - textures used with bark.

  • Normal_Int - normal intensity for base layer.

  • BlendNormal_Int - normal intensity for blend layer.

  • Roughness Min - minimal roughness value.

  • Roughness Max - maximal roughness value.

  • Blend_BaseColor (alpha - heightmap), Blend_Normal (alpha - roughness) - textures used with blend layer.

  • Blend Amount - area, covered with blend layer.

  • Blend Contrast - blend layer edge contrast.

  • Base Color Blend - blend layer diffuse brightness.

  • Specular - specular amount.

Input Maps

  • Wind and interaction - toggles animation. World Position Offset is extremely performance intensive feature, especially with nanite meshes. It is recommended to keep it disabled if you don’t need any foliage animation.

  • Position and Index, X-Vector and X-Extent - "PivotPainter" maps

  • Deform Correction - fixes branch stretching.

  • Simple Trunk - disables complex trunk hierarchy computation when tree has single trunk.

Pivot Painter Textures

  • Strength - wind strength.

  • Deviation - amount of random branch movement.

  • Interaction - toggles interaction for hierarchy level. Only first 2 levels can have interaction due to high performance cost.

  • Interaction strength - amount of force applied to plant from nearby character.

  • Interaction radius - distance at which nearby character is able to interact with plant. (can also be controlled globally with BP_FoliageInteraction, see Character Interaction. Values from material and BP_FoliageInteraction are combined and not override each other).

  • Reaction Speed - speed of interaction animation.

  • Twist - toggles twist animation for hierarchy level. Only first 2 levels can have twist due to high performance cost.

Wind Level 1, 2

  • Strength - wind strength.

  • Deviation - amount of random branch movement.

Wind Level 3

  • Strength - wind strength.

  • Leaves Scale - self explanatory ;-)

  • Scale Distance - this material scales leaves by distance, the further the tree, the bigger leaves are drown. This makes foliage appear lush, and also prevents huge overdraw, which saves a lot of performance. This value controls distance, at which leaves start to increase size. The amount of increase is controlled by BP_FoliageManager with foliage quality parameter.

  • Softness - softness of leaves animation.

  • Speed - wind speed.

Wind Level 5 (Leaves only)

M_Plants

M_Plants is used for small foliage, consisting of up to 2 hierarchy levels, like trunk and leaves (grasses, ferns, flowers etc.) It is located at "/EasyBiomes/Materials/Master".

M_Plants

  • Per Leaf AO - enables occlusion for each leaf if plant uses 2 hierarchy levels. (Not all meshes have this data)

  • AO Offset - AO bias.

  • AO Scale - AO brightness.

  • Diffuse AO - diffuse portion of AO.

  • SSS AO - SSS portion of AO.

  • Noise - some meshes have global AO noise applied to them, which helps with appearance variety. This value controls amount of that noise.

  • Noise Contrast - contrast of AO noise.

Ambient Occlusion

  • Tint A - tint color A used for per plant random tint.

  • Tint B - tint color B used for per plant random tint.

  • SSS Tint - global SSS tint.

  • Tint Backside - leaves backside tint.

Colorize

  • Base Color, Normal, SSS (alpha - roughness) maps

  • Diffuse - diffuse brightness.

  • Normal - normal intensity.

  • SSS - translucency brightness.

  • Roughness Min - minimal roughness value.

  • Roughness Max - maximal roughness value.

  • Specular - specular amount.

Textures

  • Strength - wind strength.

  • Speed - wind speed.

  • Interaction radius - distance at which nearby character is able to interact with plant. (can also be controlled globally with BP_FoliageInteraction, see Character Interaction. Values from material and BP_FoliageInteraction are combined and not override each other).

  • Interaction strength - amount of force applied to plant from nearby character.

  • Softness - softness of plant animation.

  • Reaction Speed - speed of interaction animation.

Wind Level 1, 2

  • 2 Levels - enables animation of 2 hierarchy level.

  • WPO - toggles animation. World Position Offset is extremely performance intensive feature, especially with nanite meshes. It is recommended to keep it disabled if you don’t need any foliage animation.

WPO

M_WaterPlants

M_WaterPlants is used for plants, which lay on the water surface (like water lily). It is located at "/EasyBiomes/Materials/Master".

M_WaterPlants

Global

  • Pixel Depth Offset - self explanatory ;-)

  • Wind And Interaction - toggles animation. World Position Offset is extremely performance intensive feature, especially with nanite meshes. It is recommended to keep it disabled if you don’t need any foliage animation.

  • Fade Speed - how fast interaction animation fades out.

  • Interaction radius - Distance at which nearby character is able to interact with plant.

  • Interaction Strength - amount of force applied to plant from a nearby character.

  • Wind - toggles wind animation.

  • Wind Strength - self explanatory.

Interaction

  • Base Color, Normal, SSS (alpha - roughness) maps.

  • Tint - tint color.

  • Diffuse - diffuse brightness.

  • Normal - normal intensity.

  • SSS - translucency brightness.

  • Roughness Min - minimal roughness.

  • Roughness Max - maximal roughess.

Textures