Chapter 4. Material and Light

In this chapter, we will learn in detail about the materials and the lights in Unreal Engine 4. We have grouped both Material and Light together in this chapter because how an object looks is largely determined by both—material and lighting.

Material is what we apply to the surface of an object and it affects how the object looks in the game. Material/Shader programming is a hot ongoing research topic as we always strive to improve the texture performance—seeking higher graphic details/realism/quality with limited CPU/GPU rendering power. Researchers in this area need to find ways to make the models we have in a game look as real as possible, with as little calculations/data size as possible.

Lighting is also a very ...

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