In this tutorial, I show how to create an advanced auto material that uses angle blend, height blending, and altitude blending together.

Here's the playlist for the whole series:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL78XDi0TS4lHI72hWFQHpDJpL87LiQPgC


Shader Book Recommendations
https://www.bencloward.com/resources_books.shtml

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Theme Music
Peace in the Circuitry - Glitch Hop
http://teknoaxe.com/Link_Code_3.php?q=1526

Background Music
Speo - Still Young
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Tbi_MMIjQ

#UnrealEngine #shadergraph #Unity

Ben Cloward

Episode 16 of a terrain shader series demonstrates building an advanced auto material for terrain in both Unreal Engine and Unity. The material automatically blends grass, cliff, dirt, and snow layers based on terrain slope and altitude using three key tools: an altitude mask (black-to-white gradient between two world-space heights), a terrain angle mask (gradient based on slope angle with pixel normal support for detail), and a height lerp node (blends layers using each material's height data). In Unreal, the workflow covers blending mossy and rocky grass via height lerp driven by altitude, blending dirt and cliff materials by altitude on slopes, combining slope and grass groups via terrain angle mask, and adding altitude+angle-driven snow that creeps down steeper angles at higher elevations. The Unity section mirrors this approach using equivalent shader nodes, including tile-break layers to reduce tiling artifacts and a lerp-driven mask center for realistic snow distribution.

Terrain Advanced Auto Material - Terrain Shaders - Episode 16