Distortion Shader - UE4 Materials 101 - Episode 4

In this video, we create a distortion shader in the Unreal Material Editor using noise textures to offset our UV coordinates. This video teaches the basics of UV manipulation including texture scaling with multiply and texture scrolling with addition. If you're learning to create materials in Unreal Engine, this is a great place to start!

Download the textures used in this video:

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Learn to write shaders in HLSL:

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Theme Music
Peace in the Circuitry - Glitch Hop

Background Music
Sappheiros & Almaa - Dreams

[adamplechaty]

I've seen many tutorials on shaders, paid for them even, but none had the quality bar set so high in terms of how clearly and well they explained the topic. Cannot believe this isn't an official UE learning tutorial and/or paid content on Gnomon for example. This one trumps both and all the rest. Subbed and hooked for more. Thank you!

[littlemissmau]

Thank you so much, this is one of the clearest tutorials I've ever watched, you explain everything wonderfully!

[lonegamerfrombd]

OMG!!! Why didn't I find this channel last year? Finally someone who can show fundamentals!!

[AndrewByrnes]

Best there is - hands down. I’ve paid for tutorials that are half the quality of these videos alone. And we get them in a full series! Doing the community a solid!

[Vemrah]

I cannot stop watching these amazing tutorials. Epic must give you Mega Grant !

[l_t_m_f]

I never "got" that Multiply litterally... well... MULTIPLIES. These videos are extremely enlightening. Ty so much !

[blastforge]

I would recommend to anyone using this to;
Add -0.5 this will take your black and white image 0 to 1 values and make them -0.5 to 0.5. Then if you multiply the result by 2 you get -1 to 1.

Do this after the Add node with 2 appended texture inputs. You can then continue to multiply this result by 0.03 as per the example to lower the intensity of the distortion.

This will make the distortion go both up and down, left and right. The value 0.5 in the original texture will be no distortion. Currently as you can see the distortion is only pushing pixels diagonally up and left.

You can do these 2 operations with a single node called ConstantBiasScale, this Adds Bias to the input -0.5 in this case, and then Multiplies that result by the scale 2. If you have input values from eg 0 to 3 you would want to Bias -1.5 and Scale 2

[needlessToo]

Even though I've already known everything you talked about here, this is the first time everything clicked perfectly in my mind. This is what I needed for a long time. You are amazing for sharing these for free!

[jackwayne]

I'm so glad I've discovered this channel

[carsncrew]

Praying Heartly For you Sir. Best ever teaching video in the world

[sinksinkswim]

Great little tutorial series, I went from having a vague understanding just from playing around in UE to actually understanding what I'm doing and how to produce results!

[elijahgames]

i've been making a quake styled game for a while now and this shader is perfect for the water effect quake 1 had.

[tenprinthello]

Can I say, I really appreciate that you keep the entire node network visible and accurately describe what you're doing. I'm just getting into Unreal and all too frequently I've watched node tutorials where they use keyboard shortcuts without acknowledging they're using them, just say things like "if you look at that" and assume the viewer understands wtf they just did.

[MonsterJuiced]

Ben you are a treasure. I hope Epic have made you one of their official tutors or offered you a grant of some kind. You see, I jump into your tutorials very late and realised you kept referencing older tutorials and methods so now after going back I'm understanding what is it I have actually done and what's happening with each node I use. If you don't mind, I would like to make a compilation of your tutorials to carry with me for reference while I learn.

[jennifermeier]

Awesome, feel these tutorials can take me from something more than a general Unreal beginner to an intermediate which I feel a lot of tutorials are missing (either beginner or focusing on complex new features) - precisely by explaining the fundamentals the knowledge of how 'it is done' in engine can be more easily remembered and more importantly: applied by myself when I need it later on without having to look up a specific tutorial!! Thank you so much!

[UnderfundedScientist]

I'm only at 4:54 and I've already learned so much, like Time added to texture cord is like a diagonal panner

[manonthedollar]

This was SUCH a good demonstration of UVs and ways they can be manipulated. Thank you!

[Kokuyouski]

You leave out the scrolling and use it with bricks or cobblestone with offset image size and presto you have a borderline never repeating texture. Great stuff.

[ivanmalau]

Thank you for doing what you are doing. It means a lot to a lot of people. Thank you greatly

[mkelly]

I appreciate the way you keep everything organized and clean as you're changing things around.