Procedural Grid Material

Overview

The Procedural Grid Material is a fully customizable checkerboard pattern grid that can be applied to any kind of mesh. Very simple to use with a small number of exposed parameters, the Grid Material should fit all of your Unreal Engine prototyping needs.

This was one of the earliest assets I made for techarthub, all the way back in 2021. I’ve been periodically updating it ever since, and this latest version is such a significant upgrade that I thought it worthy of its own asset page. If you’re interested in a breakdown of my approach I encourage you to check out the accompanying tutorial, it will take you step-by-step through the entire process.

Version 2.0 of the Grid Material owes a huge debt to the work of Ben Golus and his comprehensive writeup on The Best Darn Grid Shader (Yet).

Ben’s ability to break down incredibly scary math into understandable chunks is second to none, and the code he shares in the above article was the foundation upon which Grid Material 2.0 was built.

Features

• A fully procedural grid that can operate in world or local space at any scale with minimal artifacting.
• Each section of the Material is contained within its own modular Material Function, making it easy to modify/extend.
• Supports both static and animated skeletal meshes.

Includes

Version 2.1

• 1 Material
• 2 Material Functions (one for the grid lines and another for the checkboard pattern)
• Demo content, including a range of Material Instances applied to different mesh types

Version 1.1

• 2 Materials (for world and local space grids)
• 4 Material Functions (a grid and checkerboard function for both world and local space)

Version History