material-vfx

name	material-vfx
description	Material authoring and VFX workflow for the Flopperam Unreal Engine MCP. Covers material creation, expression graphs, Niagara particle systems, Chaos destruction, and curve assets. Use when creating materials, material instances, Niagara systems, destruction effects, or procedural audio.

Material & VFX Workflow

Materials

Inspect Before Edit

Always run material_inspect before editing an existing material to understand:

• Current expression graph structure
• Existing connections and parameters
• Texture references and shader stats
• Parent chain (for Material Instances)

Creating Materials

material_edit(operation="create_material", material_path="/Game/Materials/M_MyMaterial")

Material Workflow

1. search_assets with class_names=["Texture2D"] — find textures
2. material_edit with create_material — create base material
3. material_edit — create parameters (scalar, vector, texture) and expressions
4. material_edit — wire expressions to material properties (BaseColor, Roughness, Metallic, Normal, Emissive, etc.)
5. material_edit with recompile_material — compile
6. material_inspect — verify graph, connections, parameter setup

Material Instances

Create instances that inherit from a parent material and expose parameter overrides without recompiling the parent shader.

Material Functions

Reusable expression subgraphs that can be shared across materials.

Material Parameter Collections

Global parameter sets accessible from any material — useful for time-of-day, weather, global tinting.