How to import PBR assets and tileable materials from ScansUp into Unreal Engine 5

 

“In this article we will teach you how to import into Unreal 5 any item purchased in ScansUp, explained step by step so you don’t get lost.”

 

Content inside ScansUp packages

 

Within the package you have purchased you will find several types of files, which we explain in detail below. Each vendor may have a different folder structure but they include the same essential files for PBR assets:

• Renders: You will find various renders that show how the product you just purchased should look like in an engine, with the aim of serving as a reference to verify that you are using it correctly.
• Unreal 8 bits files: Inside this folder you will find two textures, which are only used in Uneal 5, the Albedo and the ORM (which we will explain later if not it is clear to you what it contains).
• Readme file: This is a small text file and/or link, where we add useful information for you about the product, such as:
  • Content: Exposes the exact content of the pack.
  • Notes: Gives specific explanations of the product for its correct application.
  • Links: Some Links to our website, articles, licenses and legal texts related to your product.
• Licenses policy file: The major part of our vendors adheres to our license policy. This file/link is an explanation of the licenses to which the products are subject to. We recommend you to read it in order to know what use you have the right to exercise with the acquisition of our product.
• Textures: A set of textures (normally 16-bit PBR) that can be used in Unreal, Unity or any other rendering engine.
• Mesh: A .fbx (.obj…) with the mesh (or meshes, LODs…) of the object. If it is a tileable material, we normally provide a base plane in this place for an easier setup in-engine.

 

Implementation in Unreal 5

 

Once we made clear the content of the pack you just purchased, we are going to explain in the fastest and easiest way possible, how to implement our products in Unreal Engine 5 to get the most out of it.

There are some implementation differences between assets and tileable materials that we’ll explain below.

For this, we recommend creating a new folder within the “Content” of your project where the desired assets will be stored. Once this is done you can import the different items into it.

Selection of elements to import into the engine:

• Mesh: Import our .fbx inside the recently created folder as you can see in the following image:

• Unreal 8 Bits Textures: These textures are meant for Unreal.
  • Albedo: Contains the RGB texture of the model without light information.
  • ORM: It is a map that combines inside the RGB channels; AO, Roughness and Metalness. We use this map for Unreal since it is an optimal way to use 3 greyscale maps at the cost of a single draw call.
• Rest of the textures (normally at 16 bits): Import the rest of the textures from the root of the pack that you need to add to your object. Normal and Height are the main ones for Unreal. In the case of Normal map, it is very important to remember to flip the green channel if they use OpenGL orientation once imported using the Unreal texture editor at “Texture > Advanced > Flip Green Channel” or by flipping the green channel in any image editor. If you need to downgrade any of the maps to 8bits, you can do it in any image editor (Photoshop, GIMP, Kitra…) easily. You can also do some tweaking directly in Unreal by just clicking in the texture editor and go to “Compression > Compression Settings” and change some properties and bit depth of the textures. See:

 

Material Creation in Unreal

 

Once everything has been imported, we are going to explain how to set your material and apply it to your mesh.

The first thing we need to do it’s to create a new material, rename it and open the material editor for a quick setup.

• Albedo: Connect it to the Base Color.
• ORM: This texture uses the RGB channels, therefore you need to connect each channel to the corresponding slot. R(red) to Ambient Occlusion, G(green) to Roughness and B(blue) to Metalness.
• Normal: Connect it to the Normal slot.

We will leave this sample image as an example, so you can see how it should be set:

 

Using displacement maps in Tileable textures

 

Inside the engine, you will have to install a specific plugin, called “Modeling Tools Editor Mode”, in order to use our height map as displacement map.

Once inside this editor (“Modeling Mode”), you only have to go to the “Deform” section. Then select your surface, and within it, you will find the “Displace” tool on which you can decide how much subdivisions you want, the intensity of it, etc.

In order to input the height map to affect the displacement, you just have to select “Texture 2D map” inside the “Displacement type”, and then you will be able to input the height map in the new slot that appears.

Once we have this, you can deform the surface of a mesh using the height map.

 

Import of LODs with our Assets

 

Some assets have LODs inside our .fbx mesh files. If you want to import them into the engine (instead of using the nanite system that Unreal 5 has implemented or you are using UE4) all you have to do is to follow these steps.

Once the model is imported and the import dialog appears, you need to open the “Advanced” menu and then tick “Import Mesh LODs” to bring them to the engine.

Within the mesh editor itself, you can tweak the pop-up distances of each of the LODs according to your preferences.

 

We hope that this article has helped you to get the most out of our products and that the import process into Unreal 5 has being smooth and easy. If you still have any questions you can write to us at our contact or visit Unreal 5 Documentation  for more info.