ColorMask override impossible in surface shader

While working on a project recently, I wanted to change the ColorMask in a surface shader. I recall this being an issue several years ago and assumed it would have been fixed by now. Turns out, this is not the case. You can theoretically view compiled / generated code from a surface shader, and then save that with a modified ColorMask, but that’s not really usable.

I couldn’t find much info on the forums about this particular issue. Curious if anyone else has run into this, or if a graphics engineer from Unity would like to comment on it. Thanks!

 

Surface shaders do a lot of stuff that can't be overridden. Unfortunately it's just the nature of surface shaders. I generally avoid using them these days for that reason, or just assume I'm using a surface shader to do an initial "layout" and that I'll be using the modified generated code.

 

That's genius! For some reason, I had never thought about using generated code of surface shader. Now it's easy peasy to set proper ColorMask. Thanks!

For anyone else: You can view the generated code of surface shader, copy it, and paste in a new shader file with proper name.
Select your surface shader in Project View. In the inspector you should have this: