Material System for Archviz

Editor tooling · Unreal Engine · batch library generation

Material system for an architectural visualization app in Unreal Engine, where buyers walk through the homes of a development and change the finishes in real time. That system was my responsibility: an editor tool that batch-generates each home’s material library along with its data file, plus loading and swapping those finishes during the walkthrough. The rest of the platform — importing the architectural model and distributing the app — was handled by the team.

Unreal Engine
Blueprints

Runtime: Finish swapping during the walkthrough
Batch: Automatic material library generation
Blueprints: Tooling inside the Unreal editor
Per home: One material catalog per unit

The story

Problem

The app had to offer swappable finishes in every home of the development, but materials were created and wired by hand in Unreal: hundreds of instances, and any catalog change meant redoing the work unit by unit.

Solution

I built an editor tool that generates the libraries in batches: you set the base path and the prefix for the home, and it creates the material instances along with the data file describing them. On top of that library I implemented loading and swapping finishes at runtime.

Result

The catalog stopped being maintained by hand: adding or changing finishes became a matter of regenerating the library, and every home ended up with its own material set ready for buyers to walk through and modify.