In modern development layered materials are all the rage. One of the cheaper ways to denote where to assign materials is vertex color, and in this post we will explore a dynamic solution for accurately setting and managing those vertex colors in Maya. Using this system artists can avoid manually entering values, and simply assign predetermined values to their selection.

When using light-maps in Unreal texel density is key. However because these light-maps can often be quite small, doing this right can be a frustrating process which requires artists to layout their light-map UVs with the correct padding to avoid splitting pixels, creating shadow artifacts on objects in the scene. To make matters worse, the size of the object in the scene is the ultimate determining factor on what size light-map the object should use. This leaves the artists working in Maya without the proper context in which to make that decision, so here is a solution to reduce human input in the process and improve the workflow.