Materials and decals
Hello 👋
First time dash user here!!
On the first project I am building using Dash I have noticed a couple of things like the changes in the tools and interface since the Getting started video was released.
I have manage to figure some things around but so far I have not been able to figure out how to manage and duplicate materials. So after assigning a material to an object how can I duplicate this material to apply it to a different object? Haven't seen any option in the material editor or dash content browser. So in this case I just located the material in the Unreal content browser and duplicate it and applied it to the other object. But doing so this duplicated material can't be edited with the dash material editor.
Also is there any option to paint in the blend material? So far I can only tweak the blending with the provided sliders in the material editor wich doesn't seem to allow me to restrict the blending to a specific area on the mesh.
The other thing is that the decals don't seem to be working. If a drag a decal to the scene it has no effect. Also if a select any scattering option when draging the decal to the scene it gets scattered but again is effect is not visible in the escene.
Also while trying the color grading option to extract it from an image in the dash board it has no effect on the scene and sometimes the grading button on the image in the dash board disappear.
20 Replies
Hey! @hmercado Welcome here!
Let me address your thoughts!
1. Hmm, so you would basically like to be able to drop one single material from the Dash Content Browser, onto two or more objects and edit them with Material Edit individually? I don't think we have gotten any requests about that workflow before, actually, interesting! We designed Material Edit to work the opposite, if you have added one material to several objects, changing one, changes all of them.
2. The blend material uses Vertex Colors actually, so you can use the Mesh Paint Mode in UE 🙂 See video
3. I guess you are using decals from FAB, yee there is a bug in Dash 1.8.6, it will be fixed in the next update! If you have some decals from Quixel Bridge, they should work
4. To have that grading button work, you need to be looking through a Dash camera in the viewport, did you do that?
Thank you!
1. Yes! Actually if I have one material already applied to an object I need to duplicate this material to apply it to a different object so changes made to each material instance only affect the respective object. So to duplicate the material instance I could not find any way to do it in the Dash material editor or the Dash content browser. As I understand the Dash material editor is only available for materials applied using the Dash content browser. If I apply a material to an object using the Unreal content browser that material is not available to edit with the Dash material editor, correct?
2. Great! that is exactly what I need to know so I can paint the blend where needed.
3. Yeah, I tried a decal from Quixel downloaded through FAB.
4. Yes, I have only a Dash camera in my scene and I was looking through it in the viewport. I could change color grading settings in the camera with the Dash editor but the grading from the photo in the Dash board was not affecting the camera. Also note the weird issue on the grading button in the Dash board occasionally disappearing.
1. Yee I think we have not added a duplicate function as we designed Material Edit the way I explained🤔 So then it makes more sense to drag and drop it from CB, again, rather than having a duplicate button. And yes, Material Edit and Blend Material is only available for our Master Material, which is automatically used when you drag and drop Megascans (from the FAB view or the Quixel view in the Dash CB) and Poly Haven (from the poly haven view in the Dash CB). But! There actually exists one (quite-bad) way to do what you want. See video below.
a) Drag and drop a MS material from Dash CB onto object 1
b) Right click the material in the Dash CB, Find in Content Browser. This takes you to our version of the MS material
c) Make a duplicate there of said MS material
d) Now you can drag and drop the duplicate and have individual Material Edit access (kinda)
e) As seen in the video, being able to open Material Edit on the duplicated material worked so and so, I had to drag and drop in another material first from Dash CB, and then drag the duplicate from the UE CB.
f) I will note down this request, as my workaround here was just bad bad 😄
4. I actually managed to replicate it, so we will look into a fix!
Oh but to be able to paint the blending maps the Dash actor has to be baked to a static mesh. So after that is no longer able to edit with dash tools! 😵💫
I just tried it in a road and just to verify after baking the road to a static mesh to be able to paint with Mesh Paint Mode is no longer editable with Dash tools, that I understand, but I tried editing the curve I used to create the road and as expected the road did not update accordingly but UE crashed just after editing the curve 🥴
Ohh yee that's right 😦
Will see if it is possible to fix mesh paint option for our meshes!
that crash sounds super weird, is it reproducible?
Let me try it again see if it crash
@Daniel - COO Oh yeah!! It did crash! But it actually crashes if I hit undo to the curve edit! Even if I don't do anything before that. I just edit that curve and undo and UE crashes! 🤔
Well is crashing when I undo any curve edit in this scene.
by curve edit you mean basic like this?
Yeah
Feels like a UE/project problem if you mean normal spline point edit🤔
Do you see anything in the crash log?
You mean here?
Yee, doesn't seem to be related to Dash at least 🤔
Looks like is only happening with the 2 curves I used to create the roads on my scene 🤔
aah the curve is still linked to an active road tool🤔
I tried it on my end but no problem. So I guess it may be related to the fact that you seem to have a lot connected to that spline, so the undo process is quite heavy and I my guess is that is causing the crash :/
Guess could be something like that, yes
If you get that problem with new scenes/curves, please let me know!
Hey guys, I created a Terrain via dash, applied blend materials, baked into static mesh to paint vertex colors but it doesn't allow me to paint at all. Is there an issue with terrain to static mesh workflow? Tried with a primitive, same issue, am i missing something?
Hey @Roberto if you have baked it down it should work! Will double check so there is no bug soon!
And remember that you can't have enabled nanite on the terrain, then vertexpaint wont work
it worked here at least🤔
Thanks, i'll double check if i have nanite on it
edit: I did have Nanite on it, forgot about it not working with mesh paint. Thanks! ANother question, When you AI tag materials and they become available in the content browser, are you not able to select more than one in order to create a blend?
Great! 🙂
Not yet no, we are working on that support!