Applying materials to the Revit assets

- [Instructor] So let's have a look now at adding some Unreal Engine materials to our Revit model that we've brought all the way through using Datasmith into our Unreal Engine scene. Now I mentioned previously in one of the previous videos in this chapter that our walls at the moment literally look like that wallpaper that you buy that looks like brick work and you wallpaper onto a flat wall and you go, hey, it looks like brick work. We want some brick work on those walls. We don't want it to look like wallpaper, we want it to look realistic. So ideally what we want to think about here is maybe changing the actual brick work. You don't have to have red brick work, for example, you could have hewn brick work, which is like those uneven bricks with the mortar between them, which gives it a much more rustic kind of effect. And what we're going to do is we're going to zoom in on this wall section here, just sort of near the wall here, where you've got the glass and so on, where the curtain wall is. So we're going to just get in a bit closer and what I want to do here is just select this wall section, like so. Now we're selecting the wall section only, okay. Now bear in mind, if you get in real close, there is a window there as well. Can you see that? I'm selecting the window now and that's telling me that the static mesh component there is window M fixed with the window size. So you we've got a different static mesh going on there and you see we've got glass and we've got the sash, which has formed of timber. Now, again, the sash at the moment is only made of the gray and the default texture. So I could apply a different material there to those windows if I wanted to, let's worry about that in a moment. Let's just hit escape a couple of times, click in here in the viewer and come out again and make sure you select the wall section there, the wall actor in your Unreal Engine scene. Now, when we look at it, there's the static mesh like previously, but we've got various different elements made up. Now, I'm not worried about the gypsum wallboard inside, I'm not worried about the default wall either. That's just literally like a block, like a dumb 3D solid. It's this one here I'm worried about, we're using brick common at the moment. So if I click here, you can see there's brick common in the list. So if I come up here now in search assets, I can look for a different material that I might want to apply. So if I just type brick, you can see. It now it gives me all these different bricks, and you can see that we've got a brick hewn stone material, and you can see that path, game starter, content materials. Now it's starter content. You remember when we set up our initial Unreal Engine project, and we said we wanted that starter content to come in, this is the content that we want to be able to use. So if I click brick hewn stone and apply that my wall suddenly looks very different. And as you can see, there it is. It does look different, it's a gray hewn stone, but what I could do here is go to textures and instead of 127 gray, I could actually change that, I could double click on it there, and I can come in here and I can change it in the mesh editor if I want to. So you can see, I've got all different settings in here. There's 127 gray, the bottom one there. I could change that, I can add all different things to this. Now I'm not going to go into all the different settings and details in Unreal Engine. I'm going to let you go and explore Unreal Engine by doing some of the other courses in the library, but this is how you would go in and change the colors, the textures in the material. So we've got our brick hewn stone applied to that particular wall section there, hit escape just to de-select and then select this wall section here and do the same again. So we go brick common here, and we look for the hewn stone so just browse for brick. It's a lot easier to browse for it, and then just find it there, there we go. And we'll apply that as well. Now, something you'll notice there is all of a sudden our bricks tally up on the corner of the building. Another really neat feature of Unreal Engine. When you apply these different materials to different faces of objects, it all ties together. And it's just so cool. It's one of the best things about Unreal Engine that I personally love is the fact that this all ties together and looks really neat and tidy. Just hit escape to de-select. Now, getting real close to your wall and maybe just pan across it a little bit so that you can just see the edges there. If you come in and then pan across a little bit more, can you see now that you've now got a really different looking wall and the wall itself actually has shadow on that hewn brink work. And as you move it around, can you see the shadows actually change as you move? That's because I've got Ray tracing switched on as well. So I'm using a pretty heavy powered PC, but you can see that look at all the shadows and everything. It all works beautifully unlike the wallpapered burgundy colored wall that we had previously. So what you might want to do there is work your way around the building, adding this lovely hewn stone. It's a really nice part of the starter content and what you might want to do there is just maybe just scan around a little bit and just check out how it looks, because it gives a fantastic effect on the walls. And you might think to yourself, hang on a minute, that is, if I look at it, it looks realistic, when I come out and look at it as a face like that, it really does. And when I look there, can see we've got the shadows and that's one of the really cool things about Unreal Engine. Whilst it is, in essence, a flat surface, it looks realistic with the lighting and the hewn stone. It looks so much better than that burgundy wallpaper wall that you had in place in the first instance. So let's zoom in on this window here very briefly as well. What I want to do there, is just come out slightly, and I'm going to select that window frame, the sash as they call it. So that's the sash part, can you see, you got sash and glass there. So you've got materials element one sash. Now, yeah, okay, it is a sash, it's part of the window, but we want is we want some timber in there, don't we? So if I type timber, like so, you've got joist rafters. What are timber rafters made of, wood. Let's browse for wood. If I go into wood, we've got loads of starter materials again. So we've got walnut, we've got oak, we've got pine. So what you want to think about here is perhaps what your window frames, your sashes are going to be made from. I'm going to go for walnut natural like that. And as soon as I click on that, you'll see a color change. If I hit escape there and zoom in a little bit, you can see that we actually physically have a wooden sash there and it just goes nicely with the gray of the hewn stone. Now, as you start working with Unreal Engine, you'll start to realize that this, whilst it looks just plain brown at the moment, is actually a material. So when you start creating your architectural visualizations, like when you render in Revit and also an AutoCAD, it will apply a material, but the materials are much more realistic in Unreal Engine. So you'll notice that in your architectural visualizations, as we get towards the end of this course. But as you can see, applying those materials to your Revit models that you've brought in via Datasmith, really does make a difference to the project, as you develop it.