Distance Based DX11 Tesselation - Video

Overview

This tutorial covers how to create a distance based tessellation material being driven by 6 changeable parameters.

Setup

Before you start you should have a basic knowledge of the Material Editor being used within the Unreal Engine 4. Also recommended but not mandatory is an understanding what Tessellation is especially and what it does and how it's being used. If you're not sure check out other tutorials before going ahead or simply check the chapter.

Tutorial

Due to the fact that it's a complicated material function I created two video tutorials that offer step by step explanations. Please use any material of your choice ( that has a Base Color texture, a Normal texture and a Displacement texture ) as a base for the video tutorials below. First you'll add a basic and then dynamic tesselation to this material. Check out the chapter to download the whole UE4 project if you don't have a proper material and / or textures.

Basic DX11 Tessellation ( 2 / 3 )
<youtube> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3L-GlYWmpc
Distance Based DX11 Tessellation ( 3 / 3 )
<youtube> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6zyUI33FqA

Material Composition

Even though I'd still suggest watching the tutorial, here is an image of the final material.

Distance Based Tessellation Material

To understand what the Param Values mean here is a screen illustrating the situation.

Distance Based Tessellation Explanation

Minimal Distance = Distance from OBJECT to A, "Max Height" and "Iterations" with the predefined value
Maximal Distance ( Fade Distance ) = Distance from A to B, at B "Max Height" and "Iterations" value is 0, transitioning/fading from A to B

Project Source

You can download the materials of this and other tesselation tutorials listed below in an UE4 project from GitHub .

Additional Tutorials

Credits

Material created by DaveTheFreak aka David Scholze