Surface Forge is a surface painting system for Unreal Engine built by 3D content creator and VFX artist Arghanion Prime. Designed to support environment creation and general texturing directly inside Unreal Engine, the tool reduces the need to switch to external texturing applications. It works seamlessly with any mesh, adapting to both architectural and natural assets, from buildings and roads to rocks and landscapes.
It builds on Unreal Engine's mesh painting workflow to allow layers to be painted across surfaces by combining RGB channels. Surface Forge also supports workflows for meshes without traditional UVs, using techniques such as triplanar mapping, cell bombing, and others.
The tool provides three customizable texture layers, enabling direct painting onto geometry using vertex colors or mesh painting. These layers can be blended using height-based transitions, creating intricate, natural effects and offering full control over the appearance of surfaces.
Surface Forge includes a shader system built from the ground up to fully support Nanite displacement and provide high levels of surface detail. To complement this system, it also offers a decal spawner for placing highly detailed decals with precision masks, enhancing overall realism.
A recent update to Surface Forge adds support for the latest Unreal Engine release (5.7) and integrates Decal Forge, another tool by the author that is also available as a standalone add-on.
Decal Forge extends Surface Forge's capabilities with a procedural decal system that enables decal authoring and placement entirely through a blueprint-driven workflow. It includes intelligent alignment tools that automatically adapt decals to any surface, whether flat, curved, or complex, ensuring accurate projection. In addition, Decal Forge has been updated to include features such as triplanar projection, triplanar angle fade, and performance improvements, among others.
The author suggests using Surface Forge for cinematic work, noting that it can also be used in real-time projects if performance considerations are kept in mind.
For more information, visit the Surface Forge product page on ArtStation.
