When I first wanted to pull a single tile from a texture atlas in Unreal Engine 5, the idea seemed more complicated than it really was. A texture atlas is just one image divided into a grid, and UVs are the coordinates that decide which part of that image appears on a surface. Once you understand how those coordinates work, you can use a single material to show different tiles from the same sheet, which is especially handy for decals, sprites, and other reusable assets.
Start by imagining your texture as a 4×4 grid. That means the full UV range from 0,0 to 1,1 is split into sixteen equal tiles, and each tile takes up 0.25 of the UV space in both directions.
Make a new material and open it up. In the Material Graph, add the palette you want to use and connect it to the Base Color. You will now see your palette being used as your primary material.
Instead of sampling the whole texture, you’ll scale the UVs down so the material only looks at one tile at a time. In practice, this usually begins with a Texture Coordinate node, which can be added by holding down the U-key and left-clicking, then feeding into a math node.
Next, hold down the D-key and add a Divide node to divide the UVs by 4. That shrinks the coordinate space so the material maps to one quarter of the atlas in each direction.
After that, you add an Add node by holding down the A-key and left-clicking. This will allow you to add the Texture coordinate and Divide nodes to the UVs of the Texture.
Setting the value of the Divide node to 4 is where the tile index comes in. If your tiles are numbered left to right, top to bottom, you can use the index to decide which column and row to show.
Holding down the S-key and left-clicking gives you a Scalar Parameter that can be used to manipulate the X-Axis UV. The horizontal offset comes from the remainder when dividing the index by 4.
A second Scalar Parameter can be used to manipulate the Y-Axis UV. This vertical offset comes from the whole number part of the index.
To use both coordinates together, right-click and search for an Append node. Connecting the Divide node and the second Scalar Parameter node allows you to manipulate both UV coordinates.
The UVs are scaled first, then the offset is appended and added so the material lands on the correct section of the atlas.
To make the system easy to use, right-click on the Material and make a Material Instance. The Material Instance, once applied to the mesh, can then be used to manipulate the UV coordinates.
To move over one space on the X-coordinate, you increase the X_UV field by 1. The first line will be from 0 to 3. To move down to the next row, add 0.25 for the Y_UV. This field will be from 0 to 0.75.
Conclusion Once the UV math is in place, changing tiles becomes as simple as changing a number. That’s the real strength of UV manipulation in UE5: one texture, one material, many variations. It keeps your workflow flexible, efficient, and easy to control.