Material / Atmospheric Tools
Dash features a wide range of custom materials, from simple PBR setups to complex blend material systems. These materials are built to work around specific content libraries, like Fab, Polyhaven and Megascans. We plan to make them work with any custom object in the future, too.
Base Materials / Edit Material
We provide rich materials for decals, tilable surfaces, 3D meshes, and 3D plants.
To get started, you can click on the Content Icon 
in the Dash bar and open the Content Browser. In the top right corner of the Dash Content Browser, you can switch between the available libraries. The ones that we support Material Edit and Blend Material for right now, are Megascans from FAB or Quixel Bridge and Poly Haven.
To apply a texture on a surface. We made sure to make it as simple and straightforward as possible.
You drag your texture from the content library and drop it on the target surface.
After applying your material to the surface. You can click on the Edit button 
in the Dash bar to bring up our Tools Panel and in the Tools panel by opening the Active Tools list (top left corner of the Tools Panel) while having your plane selected you can open Material Edit; Where you can control various aspects of your Material, such as:
Hue, Saturation, Brightness, Roughness, Normal and so on. In the same Panel we also included some cool advanced effects such as Snow and Rain. As illustrated in the video below.
Blend Materials
This is a powerful material as it provides advanced features such as the ability to blend between 3 textures. The possibility of blending them through vertex painting. And similar to the Edit Material this tools comes with Rain, Snow, and Puddle effects as well.
To start using this shader, open the Content Browser and select up to 3 supported materials. Drag and drop them on the surface while holding the Control (ctrl) key on your keyboard. This will bring a menu as shown below.
Select the option Apply Blend Material.
Now you are all set. Next thing, you might want to do is tweak the parameters to make them to your liking. To do so, click on the Edit button in the Dash bar. Our Tools panel will open.
While selecting the surface/Asset you applied the Blend Materal on. Click on the 3 lines shown on the top left, then choose the option Edit Blend Material.
The Video below gives you a glimpse of the process of creating a surface, applying a Blend material and going through some of the blending properties.
The layers in our Blend material follow the same letter of their respective Vertex paint channel, except for T Weight, which is not available through vertex painting. This means that you can also paint your selected textures instead of only controlling them through the sliders in the Blend Material Tool. To do this, use the Mesh Paint Mode and paint your Vertex Colors to see them appear on your surface.
In the Blend Material Tool, if you scroll down you will find a parameter called Displacement. This allows you to control the displacement of your Base Layer (the first material you selected in the Dash content browser).
Displacement
Displacement mapping helps you add more depth to your materials. This process typically relies on a texture called a displacement map, or height map. The functionality works differently between UE5 versions.
In UE5.1, UE5.2 and UE5.3, displacement is available but doesn't work on meshes with Nanite enabled on them. If you want to use displacement on these older versions, always ensure that Nanite is not enabled on your static meshes. Internally, we use World Position Offset in the node graph to have displacement in those versions. This basically moves the vertices of your mesh, vs generating new, denser geometry on the fly. Important here to use a surface with enough triangles. By using the plane from Create -> Mesh Primitives -> Plane you get a good dense plane.
For that, UE5.4, UE5.5, and above have support for Nanite-friendly displacement, and so do our regular materials, and blend material. For 5.4 and 5.5+, you should enable Tessellation in your project and also have Nanite enabled on your static mesh. Otherwise, displacement won't work.
To enable Tessellation in your project, we've made a shortcut that you can access by typing Tessellation, and then selecting Enable Project Tessellation.
To enable Nanite on your selected static mesh in the level, we've made another shortcut called Actor Enable Nanite. You can always use the UE Content Browser and right-click on an asset, then enable Nanite on the asset itself. But this is slightly faster, and right within Dash, too.
Another thing to keep in mind is that when you create a road or a plane in Dash, those aren't static meshes, but their own custom format. This means they can't have Nanite enabled on them, and thus displacement in 5.4+ won't work either. You can "bake" Dash meshes (like the primitives you find in Creates -> Mesh Primitives) by going into the Dash bar -> Create -> Common -> Bake Meshes option. This will convert your selected mesh into a static mesh.
If your mesh isn't a simple plane or other Dash primitive, but instead an active tool like the Road Tool, Terrain Tool or Cable Tool, those also generate Dash meshes, and baking in that case is done from the tool panel, by clicking on the Bake 
icon, and confirming the dialog that shows up. This will delete your tool, and convert its result to a regular UE5 static mesh. It is not undoable, so we recommend doing it once you're done editing your road, terrain, or cables.
Here's a video showing what displacement looks like in UE5.1+. As you can see, the quality is quite subpar, because our plane doesn't have enough vertices. You could use the UE5 modeling tools to increase the density, but this won't be as good as Nanite-friendly displacement in 5.4+
Here's what displacement looks like in UE5.4+. The project has nanite enabled, and the mesh is a static mesh with nanite enabled. The quality is as good as it gets.
Blend Material Advanced Features
Snow, Rain and Puddles are some useful and interesting functionalities we added to our Blend materials. Snow is represented by S Weight, Rain by T Weight and Puddles by B Weight.
The videos below show Snow and Rain effects in action.
Snow
Snow is controlled by a parameter called S Weight. Which allows you to increase or decrease the amount of Snow on your material.
If you scroll down you will find a property called Snow (S) Layer. This drop-down menu gives you more control on how you would like your snow to behave.
Let's go through some important options here:
S Height Multiplier Allows you to increase the global multiplier of the Snow displacement and the Blend Material displacement.
S Height controls the height of the Snow
S Height Contrast controls how sharp your Snow is. It can also be of negative value. This will invert the way it's applied on the surface
Rain
T Weight allows you to control the amount of rain and puddle you want on your surface.
Scroll to the Rain (T) Layer to find additional properties to play with. The drop-down menu gives you more control over how you would like your Rain to behave.
These are the most important properties to adjust to your liking:
T Drip Tiling to adjust the size of your drips
T Drip Length to adjust the length of your drips
T Drip Strength to adjust the intensity for the drip normal map
T Droplets Tiling to adjust the size of your droplets.
T Ripple Motion to adjust the speed of the ripples.
T Ripple Size to adjust the size of your ripples.
FAQ
How do I edit a Blend Material
To edit a Blend Material in Dash click on the Edit button up in the Dash bar. Our Tools panel will appear. While selecting the surface/Asset you applied the Blend Materal on. Click on the 3 lines shown on the top left, then choose the option Edit Blend Material.
There you have a wide range of parameters you can edit. such as:
Layer properties like hue, saturation, and tiling for complex texture creation
To Edit the blend material on an asset you previously placed in your scene Follow these steps:
Select the object with the blend material you want to edit.
Open the Blend Material tool from the Dash Tools Panel.
Adjust the weights for R, G, B, S, and T layers to modify blending.
Change properties like hue, saturation, and brightness for each layer.
Modify tiling and displacement settings for texture details.
Tiling Breakup
Regardless of whether you are using the Dash Base Materials (Edit Material) or Dash Blend Material, you will find the feature Tiling Control. This feature lets you easily turn on and adjust a tiling breakup effect. Perfect to avoid the repetitive patterns on your textures.
Runtime Virtual Textures(RVT)
With our 1.9 update, we introduced our workflow with RVT. Thus allowing you to have some nice blending between a surface and an asset. For starters, you need to ensure RVT is enabled in your project settings. To do so, go to: Edit -> Project Settings, then type Virtual texture. and check the box Enable Virtual Texture Support
Depending of your engine version the workflow will be slightly different. For instance, if your are on UE 5.3 and below; Select the surface you want RVT enabled on, then type RVT in the Dash Toolbar the option RVT Setup will appear. Select it. You now have RVT on your surface.
Make sure to Bake the terrain before enabling RVT on it.
However, there is one more step for it to work properly; In your outliner, you will find 2 Runtime Virtual Texture Volumes. Select one and in your Details panel click on set Bounds. Repeat this for the other Volume.
Your RVT is now all set. You can drag and drop an asset on your surface and toggle RVT on and off for that asset from the Material Edit tool. For more details, please watch the video below.
For Unreal 5.4 and above, the bounds are automatically set for you. You can simply select your surface and activate RVT on it from the Dash search bar. Check the video below for more details.
For our Blend Material workflow with RVT, when changing the Weight and adding grass or another layer of texture. In order for the changes to take effect, select an asset in the scene, then select Edit Material in the Tools Panel, and your changes will appear as you change from the Blend Material, this creates a refresh event. Video demo below for more details.
Our new RVT workflow works best on Dash terrains or UE Landscapes. If you want to use it on a flat surface, like a plane, you need to select the plane and an asset on the plane and then run the RVT command, instead of running the RVT command only on the surface.
RVT is not supported on surfaces with Nanite Enabled. However, your assets can have Nanite Enabled on them.
FAQ
Advanced Water Shader
This is a new water shader we introduced in our 1.9 update that comes with waves, caustics and underwater effects. By going to the Create tab, you will find the Advanced Water shader. Click on it and there you have it! This shader comes with a rain-on-water effect as well.
Let's go through how to use our Advanced Water and some of its Properties: Creating Water: In the Dash Toolbar we go to the Create tab, and in the dropdown menu, we select Create Advanced Water.
There are several properties to play around with in order to get a result that suits you; In the Tools Panel, you can tweak the values of the properties to get the best result for your project.
Let's dive into the available properties of our Advanced Water Shader, Starting with Base Properties:
Surface Proximity Color controls the color surrounding the objects overlapping your water. Depth Color controls the perceived depth color. Calmness which controls the agitation of the water. The higher the number, the calmer the water. Water depth allow you to set the distance at which you want your river bed to be visible. Foam Surface Proximity sets the amount of visible foam. Water Undulation controls the intensity of the Wave Undulation. For calm waters, a small value like 0.1 and below should be ideal. Wave Height controls the height of the wave. Wave Length controls the size or tiling of the wave. Wave Sharpness controls the smoothness of the wave. Wave Speed Controls the speed of the wave.
These settings work hand in hand and are the key to having nice waves and Undulations.
In the video below, we will go through some settings.
Based on your requirements you can set the Calmness and Water Depth to behave as you want. Check the example in the video below:
We have some additional Properties that allow you to have more control over how the normal map of the water behaves.
Rotation: Gives you full control over the direction of the water normal map Foam Tiling: This controls the tiling of foam, the bigger the value, the smaller the foam. Foam Depth: The depth in which the foam is still visible. This also allows you to have more visible foam on the edges of an asset. Wave Undulation Strength: Controls the undulation of the water normal map. Wave Strength: Defines the intensity of the water normal map. Wave Size: Controls the tiling of the normal map. Rain: Control the amount of rain ripples on the water surface. Ripple Tiling: Controls the Size of the Rain Ripple.
Let's get to the Underwater Properties. These properties gives us full Art Direction of how we want our under water to look like.
Under Water Fog Color: Determines the color of the fog. Underlying Color: This is the color of the underwater. Usually it's like green moss. Underlying Roughness: This value represents the wetness of the under water. which usually is fully wet by default. Underlying Hue: The hue of the underwater. Fog Distance: This is the amount of underwater fog. For a more foggy effect it is ideal to have a fairly small value. Something like 0.08 and below should be a good start. Blurriness: Controls the sharpness of the underwater. Underwater Warping: This gives you that beautiful warp effect when you go underwater. Underwater Brightness: This is to control the underlying brightness. Underwater Saturation: This works well with underlying hue. it controls the underlying saturation. Bloom Intensity: Controls the underlying Bloom effect.
In the video below, we are going to go through some essential Properties:
Last but not least, this new Water Shader includes some nice Caustics, with a bunch of controls to own its look.
Caustic Intensity: Defines the intensity and brightness of caustics. Caustic Scale: Controls the Scale or Tiling of the caustics. Caustic Speed: This controls the speed at which the caustics move. Caustic Rotation: Controls the rotation of the caustic in degrees.
We hope this new shader will help you create some cool projects and give you control over every aspect of how you want your water to look.
FAQ
How do I edit my Water Properties?
In the case of the Tools Panel not appearing automatically when you create the water,, make sure the water actor is selected, then click on the Edit button up in the Dash bar. Our Tools panel will appear. Then click the menu button in the top left of the Tool Panel to open the list of active tools, in which you will see the Falling Leaves tool.
Simple Water Plane
If you just want a simple water plane and the Advanced Water Volume is overkill, you can create it easily from either the Create menu or by searching for water in the Dash search field. Scale and place it wherever you like, and then tweak the settings by selecting the water plane, opening the Tools Panel from the Edit button, and then opening Material Edit with the top right button in the Tools Panel.
Rain Fall
With a single click, you can add a fully procedural rain effect to your scene, complete with parameters you can easily adjust to match your environment. You can find the Rain Fall tool either by search or in the Create menu on the Dash bar.
If you want similar rain and water effects on the surface and assets as in the video below we recommend to use the Rain Fall tool together with the rain and water effects in the Material Edit tool. More information on that is available in the Material Authoring page.
Once you have opened the tool it is super easy to use. Move the new Dash_RainFall actor to anywhere in your scene and start adjusting its settings to reach your prefered look. We recommend experimenting with the settings and reading their descriptions by hovering over them, but here is a summary of the settings available:
Base Properties: Including the rain; amount, radius, brightness, velocity and angle. But also the splash fog density.
Additional Rain Fall Properties: Control the Fog; Hue, Saturation and Brightness
Distant Fog Properties: Control the Distant Fog; amount, density, radius, spread, hue and Saturation
Snow Fall
In Dash 1.9.2, we introduced the tool Snow Fall, giving you a beautiful procedural snow effect with full control over its look and behavior. Whether you want a light flurry or a heavy blizzard, Snow Fall adapts to your scene with just a few tweaks.
If you want similar snow effects on the surface and assets as in the video below we recommend to use the Rain Fall tool together with the snow effects in the Material Edit tool. More information on that is available in the Material Authoring page.
Once you have opened the tool it is super easy to use. Move the new Dash_SnowFall actor to anywhere in your scene and start adjusting its settings to reach your prefered look. We recommend experimenting with the settings and reading their descriptions by hovering over them, but here is a summary of the settings available:
Base Properties: Including the snow; amount, radius, size, brightness, velocity and Turbulence.
Fog and Wind Properties: Control the Fog; amount, density, size and Velocity. But also the wind direction in X and Y axis.
Background Fog Properties: Control the Background Fog; amount, density and radius.
Falling Leaves
When creating a scene, we often want to add some leaves falling in a certain direction to make our environment feel more lively. All this is now possible with a single click.
In the Dash toolbar go to the Create menu and select Create Falling Leaves. Some beautiful leaves with all the settings necessary for nearly any scenario will appear in your scene. In your Tools Panel you can control several aspects of the tool.
The following Properties give you full art direction of your falling leaves.
Leaf Spawn Rate: Controls the amount of leaves that are being spawned. Spawn Radius: The radius in which they spawn, the bigger the value, the larger the radius. Wind Speed X: Control the speed of the wind on the X axis Wind Speed Y: Control the speed of the wind on the Y axis Min Hue: Define the starting hue of the random hue the leaves will have. Max Hue: Define the last value of the hue. These 2 values together give you a range of Hue. Wetness: Define the roughness of the falling leaves. Saturation: Controls the saturation of the color of your leaves. Min Leaf Rotation: Control the minimum speed in which the Leaves rotate on themselves. Max Leaf Rotation: Control the maximum speed in which the Leaves rotate on themselves. The video below is a demo of our falling leaves:
Fog Card + Volumetric Fog
By searching for Fog in Dash, you can find our Fog Card and our Volumetric Fog. Both of these are perfect to give any UE5 environments a bit more depth, and they can, of course, be customized to perfectly match your environments from the Tools Panel. Simply select the Fog Card or the Volumetric Fog in the UE outlier, and from the top right menu in the Tools Panel, you can then open the tool and tweak its settings.
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