Tools · Unreal Engine 5 plugin · Built solo

MAKINA

Weathering one wall used to cost a round trip: unwrap it, paint it in Substance, export 4K textures, bring them back. Change your mind and you do it again. So I built the tool that removes the trip.

In development · 0.9.2 Beta 3 · Built by me, under Skobel Production

← Back to work

The layer system

A full layer system, inside Unreal.

A surface is a stack, not a texture. A base material, then up to four paintable layers on top. Picked from a library, painted on by hand, and live until the moment you bake.

Painting wear and cracks onto a striped concrete wall inside the Unreal editor

  1. 01 · No UVs

    It works on anything you import

    This mesh arrived with no texture prep at all. The layers project straight onto it.

    Material layers projecting onto an imported mesh that has no UVs

  2. 02 · Live materials

    Rust that behaves like rust

    Rust spreads, drips and pools on a few sliders. One click bakes it to an ordinary game asset.

    Rust spreading across a painted metal container panel in Unreal Engine
The MAKINA layer panel: Dust, Cracks, Deep Damage and Hazard layers stacked over a concrete base
Layer stack · in the editor

Pick any of them, drop it in any slot.

  • Deep damage
  • Expose aggregate
  • Expose brick
  • Expose rebar
  • Structural cracks
  • Crazing
  • Rust
  • Paint chip
  • Bare metal
  • Grime
  • Oil
  • Water stain
  • Efflorescence
  • Dust
  • Dirt
  • Hazard

Three profiles · six base surfaces · four layers over a base, in a 64 px mask

Modelling

Model it like a modifier stack.

Spawn a wall, a floor, a pipe. Every generator carries a live stack on top: boolean cuts, bevels, chamfers, panel seams. Change any of it at any time, then bake it down.

MAKINA: a full panel wall built in one take, inside Unreal Engine 5
Blank level to finished panel · one take, no cuts, nothing outside Unreal
The MAKINA generator toolbar: Wall, Box, Floor, Cyl, Profile, Vent, Circle, Corner, Light, Pipe, Cable and Bend
Twelve generators · one click each
A MAKINA generator's modifier tabs: Shape, Boolean, Edges, Bevel and Panels, with a Bake button
The stack on every generator

Nothing is ever modelled destructively.

  • Boolean cuts
  • Edge chamfers
  • Global bevel
  • Micro bevel
  • Panel seams
  • Symmetry
  • Resize handles
  • Connection points

Live until you bake · then it is an ordinary static mesh

Damage

Break it where you aim.

Drop an impact point and the floor caves in around it. Piece count, spread and gaps are sliders, a new roll is one click, and it works on any material.

A floor slab caving into a crater around a placed impact point, then lit

Impact point → crater → lit, in one pass

Four break patterns · even, cluster, impact, slabs

Cargo bay interior built in-engine with MAKINA

Cargo bay · built in-engine with MAKINA

The system

Everything else it does.

One editor mode, twelve parametric generators, and the detailing tools that actually finish a set. Each clip is the tool running in the editor, unedited.

What it took

One person, in C++, inside the editor.

1
Person. Design, C++ and tooling, start to finish.
12
Parametric generators, every one grid-snapped by rule.
0
Round-trips. Nothing leaves the engine.
5.6–5.8
Unreal versions supported, migration included.

MAKINA is an editor-only UE5 plugin: a custom editor mode, an exact boolean kernel, a layered-material and mask pipeline, and a bake path that outputs ordinary game assets. I designed it, coded it and use it on my own scenes. Built under Skobel Production.

Beta now. On FAB when it is ready.

Talk to me about tools