Unreal 5 Materials - Part 1 Environments (Udemy.com)
Your complete course for learning Materials in Unreal Engine 5
Created by: Thomas Harle
Last updated January 2024
What you will learn
- Have a holistic understanding of the Material Editor in Unreal 5
- Learn best practices and workflows for using Functions and producing optimal Materials
- Explore how to use Data from elsewhere in the Engine to build dynamic materials
- Apply all the base knowledge to Environmental examples, such as Landscapes and Vertex Painting
Quality Score
No CourseDuck member has rated this course yet. Taken it? Give each part a thumbs up or down.
Overall Score : 96 / 100
Course Description
Part 1 of this course covers a holistic overview of the Material Editor in Unreal 5 - from Material Types and Blend Modes to individual Math Nodes and Input Data, focusing on not just the How to do things but also the Why and looking at the underlying logic and math behind what the engine is doing. Covering how to build up your own Material Functions and build that into your workflow to produce powerful and flexible Materials. We also take a deep dive into UV's - how they work in the engine and how we can take that knowledge and produce effects such as Distortion, Animation, and Parallax Occlusion Mapping.
Part 2 of the course then takes this knowledge and applies it to Environmental Materials, covering:
Master Materials and some best practices in how to build them,
Decals and their various blend modes - as well as more complex effects such as Angle Based Masking and Custom Decal responses,
Vertex Painting to blend between material types,
various approaches to make Landscape Materials and using RVTs to blend objects into them,
the new Layered Materials system
how to use Input Data to automate variation in materials and create angle based effects such as Snow.
Instructor Details
- 4.8 Rating
221 Reviews
Thomas Harle
I have over 12 years experience as a Realtime VFX artist working in Video Games on projects such as Gears of War Remastered and the Sniper Elite series, including over 5 years of teaching Unreal at a Masters Degree Level.
I have an active Youtube channel where I create tutorials for Game Development as well as longer courses.
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Reviews
By Mark Corrigan on 3/10/2026
It was alright, would like to know more about how to create normals etc in photoshop etc before bringing it into Unreal. Some of the landscape materials didn't work because i could only use Unreal 5.3.2
By Ho Siang Tay on 11/24/2025
I’ve just completed this Udemy course. It provides all the essential foundational material knowledge you need for UE5, and it includes clear examples of materials and material functions that you can review at your own pace. The course helps you understand the core concepts and how they are used, and from there it’s up to you whether you want to dive deeper into how certain functions work or simply apply the knowledge right away. You can always revisit the examples one by one to build a deeper and clearer understanding without feeling overwhelmed. One small note: as mentioned by other learners who purchased this course, as well as in some of the early videos, there were occasional knocking sounds that felt uncomfortable when using noise-cancelling earphones. Aside from that, the course was very helpful.
By Mono Gatari on 6/30/2025
I wasn't very familiar with materials, but this course felt very comprehensive in covering the topic. It was an excellent course. There’s just one thing I noticed—in Lesson 95, “Auto Materials,” when I opened the corresponding level, the viewport appeared completely black, and only "WorldDataLayers" was shown in the Outliner. For reference, I was using UE5.3.2. All in all, it was a fantastic course.
By e b on 12/7/2024
Most comprehensive treatment of Unreal materials that I've come across so far. The instructor is experienced and provides really useful tips of when certain nodes can be used to create an effect. I'm already familiar with the math nodes but there were some nuggets in there that I hadn't considered before such as creating step functions with linear gradients and floor/ceil and providing detailed insights into performance and implementation details behind the scenes. Highly recommend!
By Jordan Shepherd on 6/6/2024
Giving a great base for learning fundamentals. I am taking down thorough notes on all of these tips that will surely be a great help when starting my own practical projects in the future.
By Kirstin Wright on 5/7/2024
As a complete novice to UE, I am finding this a useful learning experience so far, and am making note of the handy little UE tips and tricks along the way. I do already have some knowledge of node trees and material functions in Blender and 3Ds Max, so my recommendation would probably be best aimed at people in the same boat as me - learning how to navigate the UI & do material related tasks in 'yet another 3D programme'. :) I am finding that each area is clearly explained. If I miss a bit, it's quickly picked up on a short replay. So far, so good!
By Jimmy Orevich on 6/12/2023
This course was way above my level of understanding for materials. I probably only understood about 10% of what was talked about. This is all master class level stuff, and even though I didn't understand it all, I could tell the instructor had vast knowledge of materials. I will come back to this course after going through some more beginner focused courses.
By Chris Wingler on 3/3/2023
Very knowledgeable instructor, course is very in depth and worth the money, nice to have access to the library of example materials for future reference, just wish render targets and strata materials were covered, but perhaps they'll be in an upcoming update.
By Alexander Wood on 2/23/2023
This course will not teach you some cool special VFX effects, but it is an encyclopedic-style course. Sometimes, certain courses showcase cool special effects as examples, but after you learn them, you may not be able to effectively modify these effects because you do not have a comprehensive understanding of Unreal. I think this course provides a complete foundation, so that you can apply the knowledge you learn to more advanced and cool things in the future. That is unfortunate that most people may overlook and miss out on this course because the course name did not catch your attention. It's really good!
By Arsen Stakhiv on 12/22/2022
Amazing course! I work a lot in UE but I still found a lot of new information and was amazed at how teacher explain it! Thank you! and I will wait second part






