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Make a Portal Inside of UE5 - Chapter Two

Create a gateway portal. Learn Blender, UE5, Blueprints and Niagara.

Intro

This post is a continuation in the creation of a portal inside of Unreal Engine 5. We will be creating our geometry, textures, material graph, VFX, blueprints and logic from scratch.

In the previous post, we went over the creation of the static geometry - the gateway threshold. We spent lots of time practicing Blender and learning some tricks for sketching shapes inside of there.

In this secondary chapter, we will focus on Material Graph work inside of Unreal Engine 5. We will spend time to create our vortex plane VFX. It is entirely driven through material (shader) logic.

If you are new to these series - this time around I’ve made it all into video tutorials (unlike some of my previous tutorial series where I wrote things as a step-by-step text). As such this blog page will document the current chapter and give you previews and context as to what you will learn. After going over a written summary, we will dive right into the videos.

This Chapter:

Watch this tutorial chapter in order to learn how to use different nodes inside of Unreal Engine 5's Material Graph. There is a lot of powerful visual effects that can be derived entirely through shader logic. This is the case here, stick around and learn tricks on exactly that topic.

End Result Preview

A UE5 screenshot that shows a few flat planes sitting on a dark, blue ground. The planes have blue and red water-like vortex. In the upper parts of the picture, there are gateway props. Those have gray, placeholder materials and golden trims. The gates hold the planes with the vortex and in front of those there are also Niagara particle effects. The vortex planes will be the end result of completing this tutorial chapter.

After completing this chapter of the tutorial series, you will have what is seen in the image above. You will have created a custom parent material graph with all of the parameters and variables exposed in order to control a vortex VFX that goes onto a flat plane. You will be able to instance children materials, from the parent shader, and recolor them in different hues.

Tutorial Video:

The current chapter two is composed of four videos that go over the Material Graph work inside of UE5:

Part 2 - Starting Vortex Material in UE5

Video embedded above. Title is "Create a Portal in UE5 - Start of Material Shader Graph - Tutorial Series Part 2". The video thumbnail features a large, red portal. A player is seen walking into it. There are the UE5 and Blender logos featured too.

Part 2.2 - Material Graph Work in UE5

Video embedded above. Title is "Create a Portal in UE5 - Material Graph Work - Part 2.2". The video thumbnail this time around features a red version of the portal. A player mannequin is seen in front of the portal. The sky behind is blue.

Part 2.3 - Mipmaps and Moire Patterns

Another video embedded above. Title is "Create a Portal in UE5 - Material - Moire Patterns - Tutorial Series Part 2.3". The video thumbnail shows the player walking into a red portal. To the side, there is another player. They are standing. Next to them is a cut from a camera IRL, showing a person. That is my face, talking in front of camera and explaining parts of the tutorial.

Part 2.4 - Gaussian Dots - Mat Shader

Video embedded above. Title is "Create a Portal in UE5 - Material - Gaussian Dots - Part 2.4". The video thumbnail shows a red version of the portal inside a dark room. Next to it there is a green and yellow version of the same portal. In the corner, a third copy is in rainbow colors. In the middle of the screen is the player character.

Chapter Three

Stay tuned for Chapter Three.

What to expect in the next, third chapter of these tutorials:

  • We will dive into Substance Designer and learn some of the nodes in there.
  • We will cover how to create a few tiling textures.

The end result will be:

  • A tiling, purple and blue clouds texture.
  • A rainbow splatter tiling texture.

YouTube Playlist

A YouTube screenshots. It showcases a playlist. Inside of it there are ten videos. It reads “Creating a Functional Gateway Portal in UE5”. Each video thumbnail has a different colored portal and one can see a player either running into the portal, or running out of it. Link to this playlist is provided below this image.

You can also find the entire playlist for this tutorial series over here.

Even though in this blog we talk about only Chapter Two, I have already released lots of the next chapters. If you like the idea of creating your own portal in UE5, make sure to watch all of them now.

Here are some images I’ve taken while creating this game dev project (and tutorials):

A wide camera screenshot from UE5. It shows a blue sky and a darker blue ground. In the middle, there is a player dummy. Around the player, there are flat planes. Those are colored in different hues and have circular vortices on them. On the left side, there is a gateway prop with golden trims. It looks like a door that has a portal in front of it. The portal has lines and sparks in red, which are floating VFX particles.

Another UE5 screenshot. This one shows the player in the middle of the screen. On their left side, there is a portal gateway. It has a VFX that is a rainbow in lots of colors. Behind the gateway prop there is a sky with white, fluffy clouds. Those look like the default sky clouds seen in UE5.

Conclusion

In this blog post we showcased Chapter Two of our tutorial series focused on Unreal Engine 5. We gave examples of what we will be creating when it comes to shaders (material graphs). We also saw some images of the end result and how the portal can be recolored in different hues, for an easy game design reusability inside of your projects.

All the best,

Pete.

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