March 12, 2020

New Automotive Materials pack now available on the Marketplace for free

Automotive & Transportation

Product Design

Marketplace

Design

Features

Ray Tracing

Manufacturing

Art

News

By Russell Paul, Francis Maheux, and Nicolas Longchamps

Released in 2016, the original Automotive Materials pack represented an extremely valuable resource to not just automotive visualization artists but also laid out a path for many Unreal users to create stunning visuals. With a passion for automobiles that runs deep at Epic Games, we sought out to create a fitting update to that material pack. Available for free now, the revised collection comes with a completely new set of 10 master materials and over 150 instances that will give artists the foundation to add new materials to fit their product range.

The new master materials now utilize object space triplanar projections instead of world space mapping, though, users can switch to UVs if they prefer.

With this new pack, we ensured that the new materials worked seamlessly with ray tracing as we developed the new automotive master materials. This means users can get more realistic depictions of automotive type surfaces more efficiently than ever. Going well beyond fixing outdated materials, we created new dedicated master materials for textiles, car paint, and decals. We also added new metals, reflectors, flip-flop paint effects and are introducing new emissive materials for interior displays, new interior textiles, and a much-needed wood material. Furthermore, we took advantage of the amazing Quixel library of textures to deliver 4K texture maps in the process.

Rounding the collection out, we reorganized the materials so that finding the right material among the numerous material instances is easier than ever. The materials are now simpler, more organized, more efficient and, best of all, more fun to use.

Special thanks goes out to Audi Business Innovation and Audi AG for providing the A5 Cabriolet 3D model.

Download the collection today and try it for yourself!