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Gil Guminski
Technical Artist, Game Developer, Technical Producer
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Uber Shader for Unreal Engine 5

In my view, an Uber Shader is supposed to possibly be applied to almost every static meshes in a game. It helps reduce draw calls and will uniform the look of assets.
This Uber Shader is a starting point. It allows to quickly create and adjust the object look. There are a few options I will go into, but it should remove the need to create a new material for a lot of asset and just convey to use Material Instances from this.

The Uber Shader material for Unreal Engine 5.2.1 can be find on my GitHub here: https://github.com/Gil-1/UERenderTools
Please copy the entire folder as some Material Functions are used in the Master Material.

Here are a few examples of materials created with this shader. It's possible to create something rather simple like a single color material to a full featured PBR shader with Triplanar.

Here are a few examples of materials created with this shader. It's possible to create something rather simple like a single color material to a full featured PBR shader with Triplanar.

Global view of the material. Let's dive into the various material options.

Global view of the material. Let's dive into the various material options.

Here you can edit the Base Color texture like desaturation, hue shift, brightness. You can also add a fresnel inside the diffuse (different than in the emissive). To make it simple, you can also just use a standard color as base color.

Here you can edit the Base Color texture like desaturation, hue shift, brightness. You can also add a fresnel inside the diffuse (different than in the emissive). To make it simple, you can also just use a standard color as base color.

Here you have some options for the Ambient Occlusion. The AO map feeded should be a grayscale map (unoptimized).

Here you have some options for the Ambient Occlusion. The AO map feeded should be a grayscale map (unoptimized).

Edit the Emissive to get some bloom is quite easy here.

Edit the Emissive to get some bloom is quite easy here.

The Fresnel available here is plugged into the emissive. You can get something really shiny with it.

The Fresnel available here is plugged into the emissive. You can get something really shiny with it.

The Metallic map feeded should be a grayscale map (unoptimized). To respect PBR values it should be completely black or completely white, but you could use a light grey value to mimic dust on metal.

The Metallic map feeded should be a grayscale map (unoptimized). To respect PBR values it should be completely black or completely white, but you could use a light grey value to mimic dust on metal.

The Normal Map should be feeded a Normal optimized texture. The triplanar used (if activated) is optimized to conserver normal continuity.

The Normal Map should be feeded a Normal optimized texture. The triplanar used (if activated) is optimized to conserver normal continuity.

The Specular can be used to shutoff the reflectivity of the material.

The Specular can be used to shutoff the reflectivity of the material.

The Roughness can be adjusted like other parameters. It is also possible to use the albedo as a base for roughness (which is usually standard for a lot of materials.

The Roughness can be adjusted like other parameters. It is also possible to use the albedo as a base for roughness (which is usually standard for a lot of materials.

Finally, Tiling has 2 base modes. The UVs are used by default and it's possible to switch to a Tri Planar mode.

Finally, Tiling has 2 base modes. The UVs are used by default and it's possible to switch to a Tri Planar mode.

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