Distance-Based Material Blending in Unreal Engine 5

Tech Artist and Senior Material Artist at Meta's Reality Labs Rosen Kazlachev has recently impressed hundreds of people over on Twitter by showcasing a spectacular 3D material featuring distance field blending.

Created for a personal project, the setup utilizes the DistanceToNearestSurface material node and enables the author to blend materials together based on the distance of other objects, resulting in a mesmerizing result demonstrated in a tweet above. According to the creator, the material was set up using Unreal Engine 5 and Substance 3D Designer.

The creator also shared a concise breakdown explaining how the effect was achieved in UE5 and sharing the node graph behind it:

And here are some of Rosen's previous works, you can check out more by visiting the artist's Twitter and ArtStation pages:

If you would like to learn more about Rosen and his workflows, we also recommend checking out our 2021 interview with the artist, where he explained how to create mortar-covered bricks in Substance 3D Designer and shared some advice on using the tool.

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