The material editor is used to adjust a material. It contains the following sections to edit different parts of the material:
Transparency
- Clip: Adjust the clip threshold for the material. Any alpha value in the texture below this value will be transparent, any value above the clip value is opaque.
Color Correction
Use this section to change the color of the material. There are two different color correction methods to choose from: Tint and Hue/Saturation/Lightness (HSL).
Tint
This is the easiest method and has the best performance. However, it is not very accurate if you want to drastically change the color of the object. Tint should mainly be used for small color variations.
- Tint: The color of the texture will be multiplied by the tint color.
- Variation: A second tint color used to create color variety. The color is blended between Tint and Variation based on the object's world position.
- Spread: The spread of the color variation.
Hue/Saturation/Lightness (HSL)
More advanced color correction can be achieved with Hue, Saturation, Lightness adjustments. This is great for completely changing the color of materials or for very accurate adjustments. The downside is that it has a higher impact on performance.
- Hue: Change the hue of the material. The value will be blended between the min and max sliders.
- Saturation: Change the saturation of the material. The value will be blended between the min and max sliders.
- Lightness: Change the lightness of the material. The value will be blended between the min and max sliders.
- Spread: The spread of the color variation
Surface
The surface section is used to set the surface properties and maps for the material. There are two different Surface Map Methods: Metallic Gloss and Mask.
Metallic Glossiness Map
- Albedo: A texture containing the base color for the material.
- Normal: A texture containing the normal map for the material. Adjust the normal strength with the slider.
- Glossiness, Metallic: A texture containing the smoothness/roughness and metallic values of the material. Use the slider to remap the smoothness/roughness. The channels use the same format as the mask map (see the table below).
- Occlusion: A texture containing the occlusion of the material. Use the slider to remap the occlusion.
Mask Map
- Albedo: A texture containing the base color for the material.
- Normal: A texture containing the normal map for the material. Adjust the normal strength with the slider.
- Mask Map: The mask map contains four grayscale textures, one in each of its color channels. Use the Smoothness and Occlusion properties to remap the values of the textures.
Color channel Map Red Metallic Green Occlusion Blue Reserved for future use Alpha Smoothness
Translucency
- Strength: The strength of the translucency. A higher value will increase the strength of the light, a value of 0 will disable the effect.
- Scattering: How much the light will scatter when passing through the object. A higher value will show the effect over a wider range.
- Distortion: How much the light will scatter based on the surface normal of the material.
- Color: The color of the inside of the object. In most cases this can be left at white, unless the object has a specific material that modifies the light color.
- Thickness: A map containing the thickness of the material. Black is a thickness of 0, which lets all light pass through. White is a thickness of 1, which does not allow any light to pass through.
When using the High-Definition Render Pipeline, this section is replaced with a reference to the diffusion profile.
Wind
- Wind Control: Determines which method should be used to control how the material reacts to wind in the scene.
- Vertex: Uses the vertex position to calculate an approximation of the object's shape. Produces the lowest quality wind animations, but requires no setup.
- UV: Uses the vertex position and UV coordinates to calculate an approximation of the object's shape. Produces average quality wind animations, but requires the textures to be in the correct format.
- Baked: Uses data baked in the vertex colors and UV coordinates to get the exact shape of the object. Produces the best quality wind animations with the best performance, but requires data to be baked based on the data that Unity's Tree Creator saves.
- Wind Strength: Adjust the wind strength for this specific material. This value is multiplied by the wind strength in the scene.
- Wind Turbulence: Adjust the wind turbulence for this specific material. The value is multiplied by the wind turbulence in the scene.
- Wind Variation: Adds a variation to the wind strength based on the object's world position. A value of 0 will add no variation, a value of 1 will disable wind for some objects.
- Tree Height: The total height of the tree/plant/grass/object. This is used when wind control is set to Vertex or UV.
- Tree Radius: The total radius of the tree/plant/grass/object. This is sued when wind control is set to Vertex or UV.
- Trunk Bending: The amount of bending that will be applied to tree trunks. A value of 0 will prevent the trunk from bending and will only apply wind to the leaves and branches. Any value above 0 will bend the entire tree.
- Trunk Bending (Base): The amount of bending that will be applied to the base of the tree. Can be used if the tree has a low amount of triangles at the base of the tree to increase the bending effect.
Fade
Fade Out Distance: The object will fade out by decreasing its size between the two given values. If the object is further away than the second distance, it will be culled.
Fade Wind Distance: The wind animations will be reduced starting from the first distance, and will be completely disabled at the second distance. This is done to reduce visual noise in the distance and to increase performance.
Rendering
Unity's default rendering settings for a material.