UE5: Adjust/Change Different Parts of Texture Using Masks, Lerps and Multiply in Material Editor

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to set up a way to adjust different parts of a texture independently, without affecting the rest of the surface.

As an example: a brick wall where you'll need to adjust the brick and the grout separately but this can be done with any surface type.

This method relies on texture masks, Multiply nodes and Linear Interpolate (Lerp) nodes.

Let's begin.

Video Tutorial

Starting Setup

A flat plane with a Material Instance applied.

• Base Color
• Normal Map
• Green Channel Roughness from packed texture

Also a separate texture that will act as our mask. You'll need a mask to define which parts of the texture you want to change and which parts will be unaffected.

Masks can be created in Substance Sampler, Substance Painter, Substance Designer or Photoshop.

The Goal

• Default look = original texture (no changes being made)
• Ability to tint or recolor only the bricks (grout stays untouched)
• Ability to tint or recolor only the grout (bricks stay untouched)

Common (But Suboptimal) First Approach: Simple Lerp

The usual approach would be to plug the original texture into Lerp A, a color into Lerp B and the mask into Alpha.

This works, but it has a big downside: the moment you create the parameter, you are already forcing a color change (even if you try to match the original).

The default state is no longer the pure texture.

But we want the default to be 100% untouched texture and only applying changes when we need it.

The Best Setup

Step 1: Control the Brick Color

• Multiply node
• Texture Sample (RGB) > Multiply A
• Constant3Vector converted to Parameter with default value of pure white (Color Brick)
• Connect Constant3Vector Multiply B
• Insert LinearInterpolate (Lerp)
• Multiply goes into Lerp A
• Texture Sample (unaffected brick) goes into Lerp B
• Mask Texture (Red Channel or any other channel if it is a packed mask texture) goes into Lerp Alpha
• You may need 1-x node to invert the mask texture values, depending what you are trying to adjust

You now have the first setup for controlling one part of the texture through a mask, in my case it is the brick color:

Step 2: Add Grout Control

Now start adding controls for grout.

• Insert another Multiply node
• Original Texture Sample goes into Multiply A
• Create Constant3Vector converted to Parameter with default value: pure white (Color Grout)
• Connect Constant3Vector Color Grout into Multiply B
• Insert a second Lerp
• Connect first Lerp output into Lerp B (second Lerp)
• Second Multiply output goes into second Lerp A input
• Mask Texture (Red Channel or any other channel if it is a packed mask texture) goes into second Lerp Alpha
• You may need 1-x node to invert the mask texture values, depending what you are trying to adjust
• Second Lerp output can now be connected into Base Color of the Material

You now have control for 2 parts of the texture. In my case, color of the brick and grout.

Final Result

This exact node structure can now be used for any other Material setup you have where you need to control different parts of the texture, individually.

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