How To Setup Vertex Painting In Unreal Engine 5

This is a beginner tutorial on setting up vertex painting in Unreal Engine 5. This feature is great for blending between two materials in engine and I go over using the height map to get a better threshold between the two textures. Although its not a new feature to the engine, this is intended to be a quick refresher on how to set it up or if you are new to the engine, this can help you set it up your first time around with creating blendable shaders
Hope you find this video helpful and let me know down below if you have any questions or topics you would like to see covered in future videos!
Channel Perks: / peytonvarney

[@stormhenge]

I love that you clearly and plainly explain the nodes and what they do. I've been watching tutorials for months and this is the first time I've clearly understood what a Lerp node is and how it works. You're not just saying... "add one of these, and then one of these and plug this into that..." You're actually teaching the logic. So, thank you!!!!

[@iceddz]

Love your style of simple but informative video tutorials, even on slightly more complicated techniques like this. We are seeing vertex painting more and more in games and I love it!

[@virtuvius9969]

Short and straight to the point, while still covering the most important features of the tool. Thank you!

[@xjuliussx]

I was looking for this for weeks! and this is a very very useful tutorial, special i was looking when i was building the roads and want to look immersive on the edges ! Bring more useful videos tutorials like this one ! Subscribed. I love how it looks!

[@mjesensky2760]

This is amazing, thank you very much! Thank you for a very clear explanation, it was very easy to understand every step of the way. Can't wait to try it out.

[@TheDesknight]

Thanks for the refresher

[@alexbobyr8076]

Thank You for the great tutorial.

[@The_Zisco]

Awesome tutorial!

[@aridas4322]

Thank you so much! This solved a problem for me :D

[@Fanbun26]

This is exactly what I needed for my project right now, I want stonetiles to peek out from the snowy ground haha, you're a lifesaver! Thank you sm, you explained it really well! :)

[@PeytonVarney]

Glad it was helpful!

[@kj_evergreen]

Great work on the tutorials Peyton! Keep it up

[@kevincoulman2206]

@katelyn Johnson I know right!?!

[@PeytonVarney]

Appreciate it!

[@kevincoulman2206]

Once again an excellent tutorial

[@PeytonVarney]

Thank you Kevin!

[@Project_Erasmus]

Thank you! This is very helpfull for a beginner like me. Very well done.

[@PeytonVarney]

Glad it is helpful!

[@lasereyes5720]

Good to know it still work the same (unlike tesselation) . I'll use this as a ref until i make my own.

[@LEHtJong]

Hi Peyton, great tutorial, but in a way you only have to do the height blend calculations once and you can than use the alpha outputs to do regular lerps.

[@PeytonVarney]

Thank you, and I actually was not aware of that. I will certainly be trying that out and using it in the future!

[@WarriorOfModernDeath]

Please keep up the tutorials they are very well structured and very informative! Wouldn't mind if you set up a patreon or something too!.

[@PeytonVarney]

Appreciate the kind words, plan to roll out a lot more that I have had created. Should see more activity soon! Also in regards to the patreon, would you use youtubs subscription service instead if its an option?

[@hocinetazani6364]

Thank You

[@markecgazda3880]

Great tutorial, but will this work with no problem on material with multiple layers?

[@apixel.content]

Thank you for this wonderful tutorial. Since displacement is in the modeling tool, is there way to include displacement also in the texture for vertex painting? Thank you!

[@---Nikita--]

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[@kylemcneill5751]

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[@eyeemotion1426]

Isn't this the same as that Megascan-plugin? Or does that Megascan-plugin only work with Megascan assets/textures?
I want to go for a more stylized look, and Megascans looks too realistic, so would your set-up suit me better?

[@RH3D]

is there a way to paint only certain *faces* ? Id like to make only a few faces a solid colour thats different to all the other with no fade between - is this possible? or would i need to break off those faced as a separate object? - thanks

[@mecavica]

Question: can I use this tool for landscape nanite tessellation?

[@ep1cn3ss2]

Could we get this working with tesellation/displacement

[@TheRealArtDoctor]

Can you do vertex painting on character models? Is it possible? Is it the same technique as the way you did enviroments?

[@sorog.online1378]

is it possible to get the same results with a landscape :)?

[@denizorbey4079]

Awesome :). One thing I was wondering though is could you vertex paint on decimated meshes, or nanite (?), where the verts might not be equally or evenly placed?

[@PeytonVarney]

Overall your decimated model should relatively have evenly placed verts. if you have extreme instances where its messy with areas with large faces and then other parts where its a bunch of tiny faces then you could use something like the UE5 decimation tool to retopo it to be even triangles. That would guarantee you having even verts to paint on. You can definitely paint on a decimated mesh, it just really depends on how the decimation had distributed the tris!

[@dist5788]

Great tutorial thanks !! Is there a way to add displacement to painted textures somehow ? That would help me a lot!!

[@PeytonVarney]

So far not that I am aware of with the displacement method inside of ue5 and specifically vertex painting

[@norikaGilbert]

I did this but vertex painting does not work.

[@glormond]

Does anyone know how to do it using Megascan textures which don't have HEIGHT MAP?

[@keterbinah3091]

thanks for tut, if this helps anyone make sure nanite is disabled on yr mesh

[@peterrandall6761]

how do i get the height maps for matierals downloaded from quixel bridge inside UE 5? im only gettingthe ambient occlusion, roughness, normal and base

[@PeytonVarney]

I could possibly create a video covering quixel bridge content use similar to this if you are interested. It depends on the textures and assets.

[@andresmit5669]

What button did you press to het the node that allowed you to pick the red colour?

[@tarti16]

Constant 3Vector → Red, Red.

[@adamplechaty]

Just did a couple of tests and Iam positive it doesnt work with nanite meshes. So... if I wanna do some VP on a heavily (height) displaced mesh it will have to be without the (second) strongest feature UE5 has... the nanite. Really hoping Epic gets this working.

[@guatsx]

100% confirmed, I was tearing my hair out dude! Thanks for post ing this!

[@sundramdigipen2352]

Hi, let's say if I follow this method? How am I going to add my displacement map to give the mesh height if we are using two different materials textures. This can be done easily in UE4 with tess but in unreal 5?

[@PeytonVarney]

Still trying to figure out the best way of accomplishing that. UE4 made it much easier but yea with the new displacement methods in the modeling toolkit, it can be a little bit more complicated

[@sundramn2962]

@@PeytonVarney true. The only method I could think of is remeshing the model to high poly then displace using modeling tool in UE5 which seems to be a longer way but even then. The displacement doesn't turns out as good as UE4.

[@amirulmukmin4965]

is it possible to paint vertex on the auto material landscape
?

[@PeytonVarney]

What do you mean by the auto material landscape? My more recent video going over landscape tools and materials might cover what you are looking for

[@itsdumptruck]

So I am using Quixel Bridge and the materials I want to use don't seem to have a height map on them, is there something I am missing here?

[@snookofficial7211]

I suppose you could use one of the other textures like the base colour and use a channel from that to use for the alpha channel, it wouldn't be perfect height data but it could give you some detail to work with.. i.e. if it was a red brick texture, the red channel from the bricks would be a good channel to use for height data.

[@raptorzx442]

can you do this on landscape?

[@PeytonVarney]

yes you can. I setup a video that you can follow along with here: czcams.com/video/OqUk9JJiyTo/video.html

[@raresnastasa960]

is there a way to set this up with multiple textures? lets say 4 instead of 2

[@PeytonVarney]

Yes, you would just have the additional 2 textures coming in through the green and blue channels since we used the red one for this first texture blend

[@amerboss99]

would it work with tire tracks?

[@PeytonVarney]

Yes, this is one way you could do tire tracks. You might not have a ton of control with them though. I might suggest using this to get the dirt placed where you want the road or path and then maybe using decals with normals to get the actual track shapes and all in there!

[@knl654]

ue5 keeps crashing the moment i connect two normal maps in height lerp node, happened 5 times already.

[@ascentslight_games]

But, if my model is just a cube (so have vertex only on corner), i can't paint ?

[@PeytonVarney]

Yea that would be too simplified of a model for vertex painting. Being that the painting works better with more vertices, then having more verts on our model is whats going to be best to have this feature!

[@ascentslight_games]

@@PeytonVarney Thanks for reply !

[@alexissanchez5072]

Does Vertex Paint works with Nanite meshes?

[@adamplechaty]

just tried that and they dont, unless Iam doing something wrong, which is quite possible .)

[@yapanwolf]

what if U have to blend more than 3 textures?

[@PeytonVarney]

i generally try to avoid that in general just because of the overall shader cost that you would get from it. if you use the different channels then you are technically having 4 textures by default. If needed more than that its probably possible to actually split them up instead of having them all in one shader

[@timothybladel5828]

Love this but it is impossible for a new user to have any clue what nodes you are placing if you do not name them correcly. You called a constant3vector a basic color, and that made zero sense to me. Luckily I have been using HOudini and just derived what it had to be. But it can be confusing for a new user.

[@timothybladel5828]

Also, do planes not have vertex in Unreal?

[@JuyongJeon]

But no displacement right? :(

[@Cha4k]

You can displace it, But you cant tesselate the mesh anymore since Epic removed that functionality.

[@Cha4k]

Seems to be broken again on blueprint objects in UE5, Bummer.

[@smitteree]

What is this magic spaghetti... damn bro...trying to follow, but actually getting confused with all the wires..
I appreciate the tutorial and all, but a little bit more organizing and maybe commenting is so much easier and pleasurable to watch