Master Material
Parent material that spawns instances
Also known as: Parent material · Base material · Uber material · M_ master material
Definition
A master material is a general-purpose parent Material in Unreal Engine that exposes its settings as parameters, so artists create many Material Instances from it instead of building a new graph for every asset. Changing a parameter value on an instance does not recompile shaders, which keeps iteration fast. A typical master exposes textures (base color, normal, ORM), tints, tiling, roughness controls and optional layers such as snow or wetness.
In production
Teams usually keep a handful of master materials for the whole project (opaque props, foliage, landscape, characters) and give each asset a material instance, named MI_. Switches that turn features on and off (static switches) create separate shader permutations, so a master with a dozen of them can multiply compile time and memory. Share common logic through Material Functions, keep the number of switches small, and check the result in the Shader Complexity view mode.
