UE5: Material Editor Essentials - Most Commonly Used Setups and Adjustments You Need to Know

In this series you'll get straight to the point Material Editor setups you'll commonly have to use to make changes and adjustments to your textures.

UE5 Material Editor Essential Setups Includes:

• 01: How to Control/Change Albedo Color Texture
• 02: How to Brighten or Darken Color/Albedo Texture
• 03: How to Saturate or Desaturate Color/Albedo Texture
• 04: Combining Albedo Texture Controls (Color, Brightness, Saturation)
• 05: How to Adjust Mask Contrast

Let's get started!

UE5 Material Editor 01: Control/Change Albedo Color Texture

Tinting or changing the color of an Albedo texture is a common technique for creating variations of the Base Color without adding more textures.

One of the simplest and most efficient ways is to use a Multiply node combined with a Constant3Vector parameter then adjust it in a Material Instance.

Here is the setup:

Important Notes:

• Constant3Vector should be set to white, meaning you'll have no initial color change

UE5 Material Editor 02: Brighten or Darken Color/Albedo Texture

Adjusting brightness of an Albedo (Base Color) texture allows you to make materials appear lighter or darker without modifying the original texture.

The setup uses Multiply node with a Constant1Vector parameter, which you can then control through Material Instance.

Important Notes:

• Constant1Vector should be set to 1, meaning you'll have no changes being made as default

UE5 Material Editor 03: Saturate or Desaturate Color/Albedo Texture

Controlling the saturation of an Albedo (Base Color) texture lets you make Materials more vibrant or shift them toward grayscale.

The key node for this is the Desaturate node, which allows both desaturate and saturate.

Option 1:

• Set the default value of Constant1Vector parameter to 0.
• At 0, the texture remains unchanged. Values above 0 desaturate (toward grayscale) and values below 0 saturate (more vibrant colors).

Option 2: Invert Behavior (Higher = Saturate)

It'll make more sense to increase the value to saturate and decrease the value to desaturate. For this you'll need to invert the Constant1Vector parameter using 1-x node.

• Change the default value of the parameter to 1.0.
• Now: 1.0 = no change (default texture).
• Above 1.0 = increased saturation (more vibrant).
• Below 1.0 = desaturated (toward grayscale).

Important Notes:

• Avoid the node Saturate as it clamps values between 0 and 1 and does not adjust color saturation.

UE5 Material Editor 04: Combining Albedo Texture Controls (Color, Brightness, Saturation)

Let's combine all the controls from above for single Albedo (Base Color) texture. This one setup will include tinting the color, adjusting brightness/darkness and controlling saturation/desaturation all in one Material.

UE5 Material Editor 05: Adjust Mask Contrast

Very often you'll be blending 2 textures using a Lerp. The values that are being used to blend between will be controlled by a black and white mask.

Low-contrast mask results in soft, muddy transitions where the two textures bleed into each other. To fix this without replacing the mask texture, you can add dynamic contrast control directly in the Material using the Cheap Contrast node. This lets you push black values darker and white values brighter for sharper separation, all adjustable through Material Instance.

Important Notes:

• In this example, I am using the Red Channel from the mask. Use the channel that you need from your mask.
• Set the default value of Scalar Parameter to 0 (no change to the original mask at 0).
• Increasing contrast can push values outside the 0–1 range, causing clipping or incorrect blending. Always clamp afterward by using Saturate.
• Use Saturate instead of Clamp, it's cheaper (no extra min/max inputs) and it defaults to clamping between 0 and 1. 

Master UE5 Material Creation

You've now created and applied your first Material Instance in UE5, with parameters for Base Color, Roughness and Normal Map textures. To go deeper, check out comprehensive "UE5 Master Material Creation" tutorial course.

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