Substrate is Unreal Engine 5's approach to authoring materials, which replaces the fixed suite of shading models and blend modes, such as Default Lit and Clear Coat, with a more expressive and modular framework.
Getting Started
Substrate Materials Overview
An overview of the Substrate Materials framework for principled BSDF-based material authoring.
Programmer Guides
Programming with Substrate GBuffer Formats
An overview for programmers using Substrates GBuffer formats in their shader code.
Developer's Blog
Epic Staff-created information and tutorials in the Epic Developer Community (EDC).
A Deep Dive on Substrate Materials
Simple Dielectric Materials in Substrate
Gemstones, Metalloids, and Semiconductors
Conductors - From Simple to Complex
How to find an Appropriate Reflectance for a Material
Thin Film Interference and Secondary Roughness
A Quick Overview of Mean Free Path
BSDF Layering and Substrate Operators
Metallic Representation and Interpolation
Fuzzy Shading in Substrate
Example Material Final Details