Tried using Quixel megascans as is, separate textures, joining faces in Blender, making new material to apply here. Problem is in geometry I assume, but faces are flat. And joining them does absolutely nothing. Blank rectangular faces have no problem with textures. These 'complex' ones - do. Material slots are imported from Blender. My model accidentally came with multiple materials on it, I tried deleting the materials in Blender and reimporting, but the mats still show up in Unity. If I set the Material size to 1, parts of the mesh disappear. I can assign the same material 3 times, but that looks unprofessional and interferes with a script I need.

Republic Sniper is a futuristic first-person shooter game for mobile devices, so we wanted the ability to disintegrate and dissolve enemies in interesting ways. While you start the game with ballistic firearms not so very different from the guns used today, as you progress through the game, you earn more advanced and better weaponry. For the spiffy futuristic weapons you get later in the game, having the bad guys simply fall down seemed a little… mundane.

To come up with more interesting ways for our virtual baddies to die, I started experimenting with Unreal Engine 4’s material system. The end result of my experimentation was a good general purpose method of dissolving, disintegrating, and dispersing objects.

This post will walk through the process of creating and using this dissolve material, which can be configured to create many variations on the same basic effect, such as this:

Ue4 Delete Material Slots Youtube

The Basic Approach

We’ll use a grayscale image to drive the disintegration. Using an image gives us a great deal of flexibility and control and lets us modify the overall look of the effect by simply changing a single texture parameter.

For testing purposes, I chose a simple gradient texture. This one, in fact:

This image won’t result in the most interesting effect, but it will be easy to see the impact of changes we make to our material. Once we’re done, we can swap in other textures. With this material, you’ll be able to get surprisingly interesting variations simply by playing with different filters in Photoshop and saving the results to an image file.

The image will be mapped to 3D objects the same way that a regular texture map is, only instead of being used for the color of the object, it will control how the object dissolves. Remember, digital images are just two dimensional arrays of numbers represented visually. Black pixels are 0.0, white pixels are 1.0 and the various shades of gray represent values between 0.0 and 1.0. By “wrapping” a grayscale image around an object, every point on the surface of the object ends up with a corresponding value between 0.0 and 1.0 that can be accessed from our material.

How does that help us? Our material will have an additional parameter we can set from Blueprint or C++ to represent just how dissolved the object is. If we set it to 0.0, the object will be completely intact. If we set it to 1.0, the object will be completely dissolved. If we set it to any value in between, it will represent a partial state of disintegration.

Our material will look at the values from the grayscale image. If the value pulled from the image texture for the pixel being drawn is less than the current dissolve value, we’ll mask that part of the object, making it transparent. If the value is above the dissolve parameter, we’ll draw the pixel normally. By incrementing the dissolve parameter from 0.0 to 1.0 over a short period of time, our object will go from completely opaque to completely transparent, making it appear to disintegrate.

Getting Started

Whenever I’m working on anything that’s experimental and I don’t know if the end result will make it into the final game, I like to work in a new, blank project. When I’m all done, if I’m happy with the result, I can migrate the assets over to the official game project, but if I’m unhappy with the result, all those assets stay in the original project. This helps keep the main project from becoming too cluttered with the detritus of failed experiments.

In this particular case, I chose the standard First Person project template. It really doesn’t matter which template you use, but the First Person template seemed a good choice because it’s easy to navigate around and there’s no character or pawn to get between the camera and the things being dissolved. I also thought it would be more fun to shoot things and make them dissolve. Why write a game if you’re not going to have fun in the process, right?

If you want to follow along at home, the new project settings I used can be seen below. If you don’t want to follow along and just want to download the completed material, you can find the sample project here.

Once your new project opens, create a new folder called “DissolveMaterial” and import the texture you want to use by clicking the Import button at the top of the Content Browser. Once UE4 finishes importing, double-click the newly created texture file to bring up the Texture Editor. There’s one important setting in here that we have to change.

On the right side of the editor, in the Details Inspector, look for the subheading Texture, and find a checkbox labeled sRGB. With most textures, this will default to checked. When this is clicked, UE4 will gamma correct the image. Generally, you want this for color maps, but not when you’re using an image to hold other data, the way we are here. Base color (or “diffuse” maps) should have this checked but gloss maps, bump maps, normal maps, and the like generally should not. Uncheck sRGB so it leaves the image unmodified. You should make sure to do this with any image you import for use with this technique.

The next step is to create a new material by selecting Material from the Create button menu. Once the new material has been created, rename it “M_Dissolve_Base”. We use “M_Dissolve_Base” rather than just “M_Dissolve” because we’ll later be creating both dynamic and static material instances from this base material. The name is a reminder that we should never actually use the “M_Dissolve_Base” material directly.

Double-clicking the new material will bring up the UE4 Material Editor.

Setting up the Material for Transparency

The first thing we need to do with this new material is to change its Blend Mode to enable transparency. Newly created materials default to a blend mode of Opaque, which won’t work. If the material node is not selected, single-click it to select it. In the lower-left, look for Blend Mode in the Details inspector.

There are two blend modes that could potentially work for us here: Masked and Translucent. The main difference between these two options is that with Masked, any pixel must be either fully transparent or fully opaque, but with Translucent, pixels can be partially transparent. Either option could be made to work for a dissolve material, but I chose Masked because the calculations are easier and the performance will be better. For the types of short disintegrations I’m planning to use this material for, the impact of partially transparent pixels would barely be discernible. Additionally, since Republic Sniper is a mobile game, I thought it made sense to start with the less GPU-intensive of the two options.

After setting the Blend Mode to Masked, drag the texture vertical_gradient from the Content Browser to the node graph of the new material. This will add a Texture Sample node to the graph based on the image.

Even though the image we imported was a grayscale image, UE4 has created an RGBA texture sample node with five output pins. That’s okay. We’ll leave the sampler type as Color, but we’ll just use the Red channel to drive our calculations.

To get a preview of how this texture will be applied to an object, click and drag from the top white pin of the texture node to the BaseColor pin of the material node. Once it’s connected, we should be able to see how the texture will be applied. In this case, I’m just previewing with the primitive shapes available in the editor, but when working with real assets, you can use the Teapot icon to preview with any mesh asset that you’ve selected in the Content Browser to see how the texture will map to your actual game assets.

This preview tells us how the object will dissolve with this texture. With the cube above, we can see that the dissolve will start at the top, where the pixels are black, and will work its way down toward the white pixels at the bottom.

Break the link between the two nodes by right-clicking on the BaseColor pin and selecting Break Link(s). We connected them just to help visualize how the texture will be applied to a 3D object.

Somewhere in the node graph, right-click. This will bring up a menu. When it comes up, type “scalar”. The list of options should narrow down to just a couple items. Select ScalarParameter from the remaining items. That will create a new node and make the node’s name editable. Type “Dissolve Amount” to name the parameter.

A ScalarParameter on a Material is a single value (as opposed to a VectorParameter that holds multiple values, such as x, y, and z coordinates) that can be changed in a material instance created from this material. Parameters let us create new variations of the material from the same node graph by creating static material instances. They also let us change material values at runtime by creating dynamic material instances. This particular parameter is the one that we will change over time to make objects dissolve.

In the Details pane, you’ll see a default value of 0, which is actually what we want since objects will generally start intact. You can change this value while working on your material to preview the effect, but you’ll want to make sure you set it back to 0 when you’re done. There’s also an option called Group. That option lets you group parameters together in the Material Instance Editor detail view. Type “Dissolve” there to place this parameter in a group called “Dissolve”. We’ll use this same value for all of our parameters so that they get grouped together in the inspector.

Right-click on the TextureSample node and select ConverttoParameter. When prompted for a name, type “Dissolve Texture”. Assign a Group of Dissolve to this one also. Now that our texture is a parameter, we’ll be able to assign different images to this texture when we create instances based on it.

Before we start hooking nodes up, let’s add just a couple more nodes. These nodes will only be used while we’re developing the material and will be deleted before we’re done. Right-click and type “Time”. Add a Time node. This node is a built-in input that changes with the passage of time. Right-click again and type “Sine” and select a Sine node. Click on the output pin of the Time node and drag it out to the input pin of the Sine node. Now, drag the output of the Sine node out, and when prompted type “abs” and create an Abs (for “absolute value”) node.

What we’re doing here is getting the sine value of the elapsed time. Why? Because Sine returns values between -1.0 and 1.0, so the absolute value of a Sine result will always be in the range 0.0 to 1.0, just like our dissolve parameter. That means this will give us a constantly changing value between 0.0 and 1.0. If we use the output of the Abs node instead of the DissolveAmount parameter node to drive the effect while developing, our material will constantly animate back and forth in the preview pane so we can get an approximation of how our dissolve effect will look at runtime. Later, when we’re happy with the look, we can simply disconnect the Time, Sine, and Abs nodes and connect the DissolveAmount parameter in their stead.

Optionally, if you want to slow down the speed of the preview animation, you can add a Divide node between the Time and Sine nodes. The larger the number you set for ConstB in the Divide node, the more you’ll slow down the animation.

This is what our node setup should look like now:

The preview won’t show anything yet, because nothing is hooked up to our material node. Let’s rectify that.

Getting the Basic Dissolve Value

Because, a Masked material only allows fully transparent or fully opaque pixels, we need to provide a value of either 1.0 or 0.0 to the Opacity Mask. Our node graph has to generate 1.0 or 0.0 for every pixel being drawn. To do that, we’ll use an If node to compare the pixel value pulled from DissolveTexture with the value of DissolveAmount. We’ll output 0.0 or 1.0 depending on that comparison. Right-click on the node graph and type “If” to create an If node.

If you’re new to node-based materials, you might be wondering how we can compare a texture to a number. Well, the answer is that this comparison will actually happen many times. For every frame this comparison will happen once per pixel potentially affected by the drawing of this object. It will pull one pixel from the texture map based on the screen pixel being drawn and compare that to the DissolveAmount value.

For starters, we’re not going to use the DissolveAmount parameter, though, we’re going to use the output of the Abs node. So, click and drag from the Abs node output pin to the A pin of the If node. Next, connect the red pin of the DissolveTexture node to the B pin of the If node.

Now, hold down the 1 key on your keyboard and left-click somewhere in the node graph. This is a shortcut for adding scalar constants to your node graph. We just added a constant node representing the number 0. Repeat to add a second 0 node, but after creating it, select the second 0 node by left-clicking on it. In the Details pane, change the node’s value to 1.0.

Connect the 0 node to the A>=B pin of the If node and connect the 1 node to the A<B pin and the AB pin of the If node.

Finally, drag from the output pin of the If node to the Opacity Mask pin of your material.

When you’re using If nodes, the AB pin is actually optional, which you can tell by the fact that when it’s not connected, it’s a slightly lighter shade of gray than the other input pins. If you use the AB pin, the A>=B pin actually becomes an A>B pin, but its label doesn’t change to reflect that.

You now have a material that constantly disappears and reappears. You probably can’t see it very well, though, because our material has no color, meaning it defaults to black. To fix that, let’s provide a Base Color for our material. Hold down the 3 key on your keyboard and click on the node graph. That’s a shortcut for adding a three-component vector constant to your material. This type of vector constant is used to represent both EuclidianVectors and colors (without alpha), because both are represented on a computer using three numbers (x,y,z and r,g,b). Once you’ve added the node, it should be selected. If not, select it, and you can change the color it represents using the Details inspector. Once you’ve picked a color you like, connect the output pin to the BaseColor pin of your material.

Your node graph should now look something like this:

Et, voilà!

It’s not very impressive looking yet, but, that is the basic technique behind our effect. Let’s refine it even more, though. Before continuing on, if you want to try swapping in different images for DissolveTexture to see how they change the dissolve effect, go ahead, just make sure to turn off sRGB for the textures. A lot of what goes into creating good effects is simple experimentation and time, so don’t be afraid to spend time trying out different things.

At this point, our basic dissolve material is working, so let’s connect the DissolveAmount node to the If node and delete our Time, Abs, and Sine nodes, and the Divide node if you used one. Alternatively, you can leave the nodes in your graph for later use. As long as they’re not connected to the main graph, they won’t hurt anything. Switching to the parameter value will give us more precise control and let us preview the effect at any dissolve amount, which we’ll want as we move forward fine-tuning the look of the effect. Change the current value of the DissolveAmount parameter to “0.5” so that our preview will show the object in a partially dissolved state.

Here’s the updated graph node for comparison:

Fixing a Problem

Before we continue, there’s one small issue that may not be obvious. When we have a DissolveAmount of 0.0, any pixels that reference pure black parts of the DissolveTexture will be transparent. We don’t want that, since 0.0 represents a completely undissolved state. We could fix this by connecting the 1 node to the AB pin, but then we’d have the opposite problem — we’d have pixels represented by pure white parts of the texture not fully dissolving when DissolveAmount was set to 1.0.

The way to handle this special case is with a second If node, this time comparing DissolveAmount to 0. If DissolveAmount is equal to 0 (or less than 0, but that shouldn’t happen), we’ll use 1, otherwise, we’ll use the amount from the previous node.

Right-click the graph node and type “If” to add a second If node. Connect DissolveAmount to the A input node of the new If node. We could recycle the 0 constant node from before, but I usually create new ones to avoid a spaghetti-like mess of node connection wires. Hold down 1 and left-click the node graph to add a new constant node then connect it to the B pin.

Hold down 1 and left-click the node graph to create another constant scalar node. Use the Details inspector to change this one’s value to 1.0, then connect its output pin to the AB pin and A<B pin of the new If node. Connect the first If node’s output pin to the B pin of the new If node, and then connect the output pin of the new If node to the OpacityMask pin of the material.

Now your node graph should look like something like this:

Adding the Fringe

If you look closely at the disintegrate effect in the GIF at the beginning of this post (click the image to see an .mp4 version), you’ll notice that there’s a red or blue glowing fringe along the line of the disintegration, almost like the burning edge of smoldering paper. We’ll add that next, and we’ll add it in such a way that we’ll be able to specify the color, intensity, and size of the fringe using material parameters.

What we need to do is use the EmissiveColor pin of our material to specify which parts of the object should glow. We need to drive that pin off the same image texture that we use for the dissolve, only the color emission needs to be slightly “ahead” of the opacity mask time-wise, otherwise it will be masked out and we won’t be able to see the glow. To do that, all we have to do is add a small amount to the DissolveAmount parameter and use the increment amount to drive the EmissiveColor pin.

Except, if DissolveAmount is 0.0, then we don’t want any glowing fringe at all. If we don’t account for 0.0 as a special case, we’ll have a small amount of glowing happening on completely undissolved objects. To handle that special case, we’ll simply check the value of DissolveAmount with another If node and will only create the fringe if it’s greater than zero.

Click and drag from the DissolveAmount pin. When you let go of the mouse button, you’ll get a pop-up menu. Type “Add” and select an Add node. If the Add node isn’t selected, click it to select it, and in the Details panel, set Const B to 0.01. This will add a tiny amount to our DissolveAmount parameter. Later, we can adjust this value until we like the effect. I just picked 0.01 for starters because it seemed like a good, small increment. Remember, experimentation is key, so don’t be afraid to try different values to see how it impacts the look of the effect.

From the DissolveAmount node, click and drag out again. This time, when prompted, type “If” and create another If node. We’re going to use this node to make sure that we don’t increment DissolveAmount if it’s 0. Hold down the 1 key and click to create a constant node with a value of 0. Connect that new 0 node to the B pin, the AB pin, and the A<B pin of the new If node. By doing this, we’re saying, “if DissolveAmount is zero, output zero”. But what if it’s not zero? then we want to use the incremented value, so connect the output pin of the Add node to the A>=B pin.

Next, we’ll use the result of this new If node to drive the color for the EmissiveColor pin of our material. Right click in the node graph and type “If” to create yet another If node. Connect the output of the second If node we created to the A pin of the new node. Connect the DissolveTexture to pin B. Just like with our opacity mask, we’re comparing the incremented DissolveAmount value to the texture so the texture can drive the fringe3.

Instead of 0s and 1s this time, we want the output of our node to be a color. For places where we don’t want any light emitted, we want to output pure black, and for places where we want light to emit, we want a brighter color. Press the “3” key on your keyboard and left click the graph to add another VectorConstant node. It should default to black, but if it doesn’t, use the Details inspector to change it to black. Connect this black node to the AB and A<B pins of the third If node.

Press the “3” key on your keyboard again and left-click the graph to create another Vector Constant node. Pick a nice bright color for this one using the Details inspector. I used a bright red. Connect this bright color node to the remaining A>=B pin of the newest If node.

If we connect the output pin of this If node to the EmissiveColor node of our material, we’ll get a fringe, however, it will be kind of a pathetic fringe. We want it to be bright, like it’s burning or electrified. To do that, we need to amplify the color so the component values are above 1.0. Click and drag from the If node’s output pin and let go of the mouse button. When prompted, press “*” to create a Multiply node. In the Const B field of the Multiply node, put “50.0”. This will boost the fringe and make it look like it’s really glowing. Again, feel free to tweak the value to your liking.

Your material preview should now look something like this:

Your graph node should look like this:

Making it Configurable

We’ve got a pretty nice result now. Let’s add a few parameters so we can tweak the effect without changing the node graph any more.

First, let’s put in a parameter to control the size of the fringe. In our material, the fringe amount is represented by a very small number (0.01) which represents how far ahead in time, as a percentage, the fringe is. That’s not a very easy concept to explain. To create something more intuitive, let’s accept a positive number that defaults to 1.0. Increasing the parameter above 1.0 will make it larger, decreasing it will make it smaller. To do that, all we have to do is divide the input by 100 and feed it into the Add node.

Right-click in the node graph and select ScalarParameter. When prompted for a name, type “Fringe Size” and assign it to the group Dissolve. Give it a default value of “1.0”. Drag out from this parameter’s output pin and let go of the mouse button. When prompted, press the “/” key to create a Divide node. In the Const B field, type “100”. Now, connect the output pin of the Divide node to the B pin of the Add node. We now have a parameter that will let us adjust the relative size of the fringe dynamically.

Next, right-click on the bright color node you created and select ConverttoParameter. Give it a name of “Fringe Color” and a group of Dissolve. Now, we can adjust the color of the fringe dynamically.

One last parameter to go. Right-click the node graph and create another ScalarParameter. Call this one “Fringe Glow Intensity” and put it in the Dissolve group. Give it a default value of “50.0”. Connect the output pin of this new parameter to the B pin of the Multiply node that connects to the EmissiveColor pin of your material.

Select the DissolveAmount parameter and set its default value back to “0.0”. Save your material and close the Material editor window.

And that’s it. Your final material should look something like this:

Let’s try out, shall we?

Creating a Static Material Instance

In order to dissolve our material, we’ll need to create a DynamicMaterialInstance at runtime, but we can base that DynamicMaterialInstance off of a StaticMaterialInstance. Doing that will let us configure the look of our material in the material editor rather than having to do it in Blueprint or code, which can be tedious.

Right-click on M_Dissolve_Base in the Content Browser and select Create Material Instance. You can leave the name at the default M_Dissolve_Base_Inst. When you start creating additional material instances, you’ll probably want to give them more meaningful names, but this is fine for testing. Double-click M_Dissolve_Base_Inst to open the Material Instance Editor.

Go ahead and override any values you want. If you want a more interesting noise texture, you can try this one:

After you’ve got the parameter values set to something that looks good save it and close the Material Instance Editor. You can preview by overriding the DissolveAmount parameter, but just remember to set it back to 0.0 and uncheck the override box when you’re done.

Creating an Actor to Dissolve

We need to set the DissolveAmount parameter over time from Blueprint or C++ to create the illusion of disintegration. To keep things simple, we’re going to do it from Blueprint. We’ll create a simple Actor Blueprint with a cube static mesh component and then add logic that will dissolve the cube.

From the Content Browser, select Create, then select Blueprint from the list that drops down.

You’ll be prompted for a parent class. Select the Actor button, and when the new blueprint appears in the Content Browser, name it “BadBox_BP” (you don’t think we’d disintegrate a good box, do you?). Once you’ve changed the name, double-click it to open the Blueprint Editor. If you’re not already on the Components tab, navigate to it.

In the Components inspector in the upper left, click Add Component and select Static Mesh. In the Details panel, find the Static Mesh chooser, and select TemplateCube_Rounded (or any other static mesh you want to destroy).

Scroll down a little further to the Rendering section, and press the plus button next to Materials to create a new Material slot. Use the material selector to select M_Dissolve_Base_Inst.

In the Details inspector, look for a section called Physics and check SimulatePhysics.

Creating the Dynamic Material and Dissolving

In the Blueprint Editor, switch to the Graph tab. We need to create a DynamicMaterialInstance that will allow us to change the DissolveAmount value over time.

Right-click in the graph node and type “Event Begin Play”, find the item in the list with that name, and hit return. That will add a red node to the graph. This node will fire once when the level starts. In the My Blueprint inspector on the left side, you should see a reference to a component called StaticMesh1. Drag that out onto the node graph and, when prompted, select Get to add a reference to the cube static mesh to your graph.

When writing a real app, don’t use names like “StaticMesh1”. You’ll regret it later when you have dozens of them and don’t know which represents what.

Click the output pin of the StaticMesh1 node and then let go of the mouse button. Type “Get Material” and hit return. Drag out from the Exec pin of the EventBeginPlay node (the white hollow arrow on the right side of the node) and type “Create Dynamic”. From the list, select CreateDynamicMaterialInstance(StaticMesh1) and hit return. Now, connect the ReturnValue node of the GetMaterial node to the SourceMaterial node of CreateDynamicMaterialInstance node.

That’s all there is to creating a dynamic material instance whose values can be changed at runtime. To make things easier on ourselves, let’s store a reference to this material instance in a variable. We could retrieve the material from the material slot of StaticMesh1 every time we wanted to use it, but it’s easier and creates a simpler node graph if we just store a reference in a variable.

In the My Blueprint inspector, hit the Variable button to add a new variable. Give the new variable a name of “DissolveMaterial” and a Variable Type of MaterialInstanceDynamic.

Drag DissolveMaterial out from the My Blueprint inspector to the graph and select Set when prompted. Connect the Exec out pin of the CreateDynamicMaterialInstance node to the Exec in pin of the newly created Set node. Also, connect the ReturnValue pin of the CreateDynamicMaterialInstance node to the DissolveMaterial pin of the Set node.

Your graph node should now look like this:

Dissolving the Cube

Our cube is set up with a dynamic material, but we need to actually dissolve it. Let’s make it dissolve when the cube takes damage, which will let us test our material by shooting boxes.

Right-click again in the graph node and type “Event Any Damage”, select EventAnyDamage, and hit return. This node will fire any time the cube takes damage. From here, we just have to increment the DissolveAmount parameter of the dynamic material over time to make it dissolve.

Click and drag from the Exec out pin on the new node and type “Timeline”. Scroll down the list until you find AddTimeline… and select it. Timelines let you change a value over time. This will let us increment the dissolve amount over time without implementing the Tick event and doing it manually.

When the new node appears, its name will become editable. Call it “DissolveTimeline”. Double-click it to open the Timeline Editor.

In the upper middle of the Timeline Editor, there’s a field called Length that has defaulted to a value of “5”. Change it to “.75” so that our dissolve happens in three quarters of a second. To the right of that, look for a button labelled ƒ+. Click it to create a new “float track”. A float track is used to change the value of a floating point number over time. When prompted for a name, type “Dissolve”

Right-click in the timeline and select AddKey. Set the Time of the new key to 0.0 and the value also to 0.0. This key represents the start point of our timeline, which is 0, or completely undissolved.

Right-click the timeline again and select AddKey again. This time, set the Time to .75 and the Value to 1.0. Now, we have a timeline that increases a value from 0.0 to 1.0 linearly over three quarters of a second. We can use the output of this track for our dissolve. Save the timeline, and close its tab to get back to the main event graph. A new output pin will have appeared on your timeline called “Dissolve”.

Drag the DissolveMaterial variable from the My Blueprint inspector on the left side of the window to the event graph to the right of DissolveTimeline. When prompted, select Get to add DissolveMaterial as a node. Drag out from the pin on this new node and let go of the button. Type “Set Scalar” and select SetScalarParameterValue. Connect the Update pin of the DissolveTimeline to the Exec in pin of the new node.

On the SetScalarParameterValue node, there’s a pin called “Parameter Name”. We won’t be connecting this to anything, but next to the pin, there’s a text field. Type “Dissolve Amount” into that field. This tells it which scalar parameter we want to change.

Finally, drag from the Dissolve output pin of DissolveTimeline to the Value input pin of SetScalarParameterValue.

We’re almost done. The only thing left to do in this blueprint is to destroy the cube after it’s done dissolving. Drag out from the Finished pin of DissolveTimeline and type “DestroyActor”. This will destroy our cube after the timeline has finished running

Drag out from the Update pin of DissolveTimeline and let go of the mouse button. Type “Set Scalar” and select SetScalarParameterValue. This node will let us change DissolveAmount on our dynamic material instance.

We’re now done with this blueprint. It should look something like this:

Go ahead and save it and close the window. We’re practically done, but it won’t actually dissolve yet. Right now, there’s no way to cause damage to the cube. The default projectile in the First Person template adds force to objects it hits, but does not cause damage to them. We need to modify the projectile’s blueprint in order to make it cause damage to things it hits. If we don’t, the EventAnyDamage node will never fire, and our dissolve will never kick off.

Inflicting Damage

In the Content Browser, navigate to the Blueprints folder and double-click MyProjectile. Navigate to the Graph tab if you’re not already there, and you should see that there’s already some Blueprint there:

All we have to do is add another node to inflict damage. Find the DestroyActor node and drag out from its Exec output pin. When you let go of the mouse, type “Apply Damage”. Way back on the right side of the graph, look for an output node called “Other”. That represents the object we hit. Connect that pin to the DamagedActor input pin on the node we just added. Now, put a non-zero value in BaseDamage text field and save it. The graph should look like this:

It may seem odd that the projectile applies damage after it has been destroyed. You can put the ApplyDamage node before the DestroyActor node if you prefer, but it works just fine. When you call DestroyActor, the object is marked as destroyed, but doesn’t actually get removed until later in the game loop, so it will work just fine like this.

Give it a Try

All that’s left now is to drag out one or more copies of your BadBlock_BP to the level. You might want to remove the existing cubes from the template to avoid confusion. Once you’ve got a few bad blocks to shoot, hit Build and then Play and shoot those bad blocks to make them disintegrate.

That’s the whole process. There are many more things you can do to expand on this basic concept, such as adding a secondary color fringe, but even with just this material we’ve created here, we can create a whole slew of different effects by changing the texture that drives the dissolve as well as the other material parameters. We could even change the other parameters at runtime, perhaps changing the fringe from white to red as it dissolves. Combine dissolves with particle systems to add smoke, fire, electricity, or blood splashes, and you’ll be able to get some surprisingly convincing results.

The one thing you really have to watch out for is that objects tend to look hollow with this technique… because they are. For objects that are being disintegrated, consider modeling some internal geometry as a second static mesh and having that dissolve a fraction of a second after the outer mesh. That’s how the skeletal dissolve at the top of the article was achieved. You could take the same idea even further, having multiple layers of dissolving parts, maybe internal organs and blood vessels as separate dissolves fractions of a second apart, or using different dissolve patterns.

Generally speaking Blenders (node-based) material system can be thought of as a two-part process, of material creation and material assignment, that in practice means adding, assigning or deleting materials can be done independently of an object or element selection.

Design note: for Blender 2.8+ meshes need to be UV unwrapped and mapped for materials assigned an image or texture to appear on the mesh in LookDev or Rendered display modes otherwise the materials diffuse colour (Base Color) is shown. Learn more about the basics of node-based materials here.

A project shown in the 3D View comprising multiple objects, each assigned a single unique material taken from a larger pool of materials (not ordinarily visible unless objects are joined together and/or selected using Browse Material to be linked menu).

Add Material

Materials in Blender are data blocks, segments or chunks of information that define the surface (or volumetric) properties of whatever they might be assigned to or associated with. As such this means they can be created in Object Mode or Edit Mode with or without an active object or selection being made.

Design note: although no object or selection is strictly necessary, adding a new material to a project will automatically assign it to, or associated it with, the last item selected, especially if this was a mesh (depending on object selection a number of different material ‘sets’ might appear to be created because Blender defaults to assuming an association between the last selected object or item and the materials subsequently generated – a completely new set of materials can be added to different object selections – all of which then become available project-wide).

Although no objects are shown selected in the 3D View, the Outliner highlights the last item interacted with as an inactive selection, for example ‘trim’ shown in the above, new materials will be associated with this by default.

To create or add a material, in Material properties click the + (Add Material Slot) button to the right of the Material List aperture and then the + New (Add a new material) button below, once an entry appears, to populate. Alternatively click the + New button (Add a new material) below the aperture to create a new list item (index) and set of properties at the same time.

Design note: using the + button adds an ‘index’ or ‘list item’ to the Material List (the aperture displaying materials associated with the selected object) minus accompanying properties; + New places a new index and populates it with a set of default (node-based) properties – where multiple materials are being created, a multi-material, the + button inserts an index which then needs to be populated clicking +New (the + New button isn’t available once an index/instance has been populated so click + first to add an index then + New to populate).

When adding materials to a project they can be created as an initial ‘index’ or ‘list item’ without an accompanying set of material properties and options, or a list item with a set of properties, the panel below propagated with various settings and options.

Adding new materials can be done by clicking the + button to add a new index then populating with a set of material properties or, clicking the + New button to add an entry and populate at the same time.

The Material List (Material Index) displays the instances available for assignment, each accompanied by a set of properties and options.

Assign to Object (Global)

Once a material or set of materials are available they can be assigned. To do this in Object Mode, select an object 3D View then in Material properties click the Browse Material to be linked drop-down icon below-left of the Material List aperture and select an item from the list of materials shown, e.g. frame in the below. This immediately assigns the selected material to the object.

Design note: blank objects, that is objects absent material indexes or material assignments, will assume or take on the properties associated with whichever material is first assigned – subsequent applications generally don’t override this behaviour unless applied to local selections (Edit Mode).

To assign a single material to an object first make a selection then from the Browse Material to be linked drop-down menu choose an item to assign from the list shown, e.g. frame.

To assign additional materials, so two or more are associated with the selected object, with the object still selected click the + button to add a new material index, ensure this remain selected and use the Browse Material to be linked drop-down again to make a selection. The new slot will populate with properties. Repeat for however many materials need to be assigned to the item.

Important: assigning several materials to an object (in Object Mode) does not change the initial assignments influence over the object, it remains the primary reference regardless. Changing this in Object Mode means deleting all assignments (cf. below) and reordering their (re)application, or their being assigning to specific element selections in Edit Mode (cf. below); reordering the indexes as they appear in the Material List only changes display order, it does not affect the material/object relationship.

Assigning materials in Object Mode, objects will take on the properties of whichever material is assigned first – reordering the Material List does not change this.

To assign several (multiple) materials to an object a new material index has to be created which is then populated with a properties selection using the Browse Material to be linked drop-down list.

Assign to Element (Local)

Generally speaking, assigning materials in the local sense means using Edit Mode to apply them to specific element selections of an object. This is typically done when several materials need to be assigned to specific regions, areas or faces.

Design note: objects take on the properties of the first material assigned in Object Mode, which remain otherwise unaffected unless changed in Edit Mode through the addition and assignment of other materials. If materials are created and assigned entirely in Edit Mode, object mode behaviour is not generally applicable – the initial assignment won’t be automatically assigned to everything.

With an object selected, in Edit Mode make an element selection, a group of vertices, edges or faces associated with a particular mesh region or area. In Material properties click the + button to add a new material index, ensure this is selected then click the Assign button below the Material List aperture. Once done click Browse Material to be linked and select the appropriate set of properties to accompany the index.

Design note: the material index can be assigned with or without a set of properties – rather than assigning blank indexes they can be matched to a set of properties beforehand making each more easily identifiable (once matched to a set of properties each index will have a named and/or Base Color making identification easier).

Assigning material indexes to different parts of a mesh before being associated with a set of properties can make it difficult to determine what’s assigned where as nothing uniquely identifies the assignments.

To assign several (multiple) materials to an object a new material index has to be created which is then populated with a properties selection using the Browse Material to be linked drop-down list.

To assign materials to different selections of a mesh, whilst still in Edit Mode, make another selection (being mindful to clear previous selections, Alt + A) and click the + button to add another material index, ensure this is selected then click the Assign button. Click Browse Material to be linked and select the appropriate set of properties from those available.

Design note: in Edit Mode, to test assignments select each entry in the Material List in turn then click the Select and Deselect buttons below; different parts of the mesh will highlight relative to the selected material.

Test material assignments in Edit Mode selecting entries in the Material List and click the Select and Deselect buttons below – this can only be done in Edit Mode.

Multiple materials (shown with Base Color above for clarity) can be assigned to different selections in Edit Mode clicking the Assign button once an available index or material slot is available – each can be accompanied by a set of properties or left blank (default state).

Delete Material

Although materials can be added and assigned in Edit Mode and Object Mode to varying degrees they can only be deleted in the latter, Object Mode. To do this, if in Edit Mode toggle into Object Mode, Tab, and select the object to which the errant material is assigned.

Ue4 Delete Material Slots Free

Design note: upon object selection the Material List only displays assigned materials then available for removal.

In the Material List click an material index entry to highlight the instance to be removed, then click the – (minus) button (Remove Material Slot) to the right of the aperture (alternatively press the Delete or X keys). The material will be disappear from the list and the object will either; a) display ‘white’ if the removed material was the only one assigned, or b) the selected element from which the material was removed will assume the properties associated with the first instance in the Material List – faces assigned ‘frame’ in the below for example will assume ‘screen’ as that is the first available index.

Important: deleting materials does not remove the material itself, the underlying data block, it simply clears the associative link between it (data block as expressed as a material) and the object or element to which it was assigned. In this way materials can be removed (partially or fully/all) from selections and remain available for (re)assignment to other objects and selections (caveat: materials absent a Fake User will be lost if the *.blend is saved and reopened).

Deleting materials removes the association between material and object/selection not the underlying data block (cf. above), which should remain available for use – caveat: materials prefixed with a ‘0’ are Fake Users, data that can be lost if the project they’re in is saved and reopened.

Materials can only be removed in object mode, which will strip the association, the selection then assuming the initial materials properties or those of the first index in the Material List – in the above ‘frame’ is removed and in doing so those faces then take on the properties of the first entry in the Material List, ‘screen’.

Delete All Materials

To batch delete some or all materials from an object, the Outliner can be used as an alternative because the Material List can only remove single instances at a time. To do this, select the object with materials to be removed and in the Outliner expand its details clicking the ► icon to the left of the appropriate mesh listing. Once assignments are shown, Shift + click each item, right-click those highlighted and then select Delete from the context menu. All the materials will be deleted from the selected object.

Ue4 Delete Material Slot

Design note: using the Outliner to delete materials may leave indexes in the Material List, which will need removing separately per the above – using the Outliner, as with the Material List, is only deleting the relationship between object and material(s), it does not remove the underlying data blocks.

Removing several materials at a time (batch removal) can be done using the Outliner; view the objects details and highlight the entries to be removed, right-click then select Delete from the context menu.

Delete Material>