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How can I adjust multi-textures on one object?

Discussion in 'General Graphics' started by witch mignon, Aug 17, 2015.

  1. witch mignon

    witch mignon

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    Hi

    I'm new to unity.

    in Unreal 4, I can adjust diffuse color, emission, transparency, normal, and many other textures on one object through material editor.
    I can't find similar function in Unity. There are several shaders scattered, I can't find one shader which contains all the diffuse color, emission, transparency, roughness, metalness and others in it.
    I mean there is transparent shader but i can't find a shader which contains diffuse color, normal AND transparency option.

    Where can I find it? How can I add that shader? oh, I'm using unity 5 right now.

    Thx ahead.
     
  2. Todd-Wasson

    Todd-Wasson

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    I'm not really a graphics guy, so hopefully someone else will come along with a better answer. For now, these might help:
    http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/shader-StandardShader.html
    https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/5-tutorials/standard-shader

    What you want to do is click on a material. That has all the shader options. For something with the standard shader it'll have albedo, metallic, smoothness, emission, etc..

    Transparency: At the very top is a little drop down that says "Rendering Mode opaque." Change opaque to transparent. That'll get the renderer to pay attention to the alpha channel. To make something more transparent, click the color next to "Albedo" and change the alpha value.

    You can use other shaders besides standard if you want. For those you do the same thing, just click the material and the options for maps and so on for that shader will show up in the inspector.
     
  3. Todd-Wasson

    Todd-Wasson

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    Maybe this will help. Here you can see I've clicked a material in the bottom. Now look on the right panel. At the top it says "Boat Standard Shader" which it the name of the material. Under that is says "Shader : Standard" which is the shader that the material is using. If you want to change the shader on a material, you click that "standard" and it'll let you pick another one. (There are a couple of tesselation shaders in there too that are fun to play with :D )

    Then under that of course are all the options that particular shader is using.

    At that point you just drag the material (bottom center of screen) onto whatever game objects you want to use it.

    unity help materials.png
     
  4. witch mignon

    witch mignon

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    Hi, thx for the links,

    What I don't understand is, where is trasparency map option? I have a baked tranparency texture, It's like that image I attached.

    I drag other maps to that shader and it works fine, but where can I adjust transparent 'map'?
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Aug 17, 2015
  5. witch mignon

    witch mignon

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    Hello, Thx for the answer,

    but where is roughness? and can't I adjust specular AND metalness?
    height map looks like bump map...and detail mask..it's maybe for roughness?

    and I have a baked transparency texture, where can I adjust that texture?

    If I'm being dumb plz understand, I installed unity yesterday and I'm familiar to unreal and other 3d app materials.
     
  6. Todd-Wasson

    Todd-Wasson

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    There are two workflows with the standard shader:

    1) There is a "standard specular" shader if you want to work directly with specular.

    2) The standard (without specular) shader (the one I showed you) is figuring out the specular components from the combination of "metallic and smoothness" for you, like a physical material. Some people prefer to use the "standard specular" approach. Some like the "standard" approach.

    This is all covered in the links I provided, so I'll refer you there for more info.



    Detail map is a second texture over the first one, basically. My understanding is that it's normally used for extra detail up close.

    You don't have to use all the maps (or any of them, actually). Probably the quickest way to get going if you want to just dive in is to start playing with one setting at a time all by itself. Just don't assign any maps except one and play with it to see what it does. Then move on to the next one.
     
  7. Todd-Wasson

    Todd-Wasson

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    Your transparency map: I'm not sure. It might work on the "occlusion map?" Don't know really.
     
  8. Todd-Wasson

    Todd-Wasson

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    Oh, wait, what I said wouldn't be right about the occlusion map probably. That's for self shadowing, I think.

    I'm not sure if transparency can be a separate map in the standard shader like that. Maybe someone else might know. What I would try doing is putting some other texture in the albedo slot, then try putting your transparency map in the other slots (one at a time) to see if any of them do it. Otherwise you might have to bake it into the alpha channel of the albedo map (your main texture) somehow. Again, I'm not a graphics guy so hopefully someone else will come in here and answer your questions better than I can.
     
  9. witch mignon

    witch mignon

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    Thx for the explanation.

    It's just, I'm not familiar with game engines(also beginner for unreal), I've been learning 3d apps for months, they can bake all kind of textures so I basically baked at least 4-5 textures for one model,
    I just wanted to know how far I can go with textures in unity.
     
  10. Todd-Wasson

    Todd-Wasson

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    I understand. Yes, what you'll want to do is watch the video I posted and read the link. That will get you moving in the right direction.
     
  11. Todd-Wasson

    Todd-Wasson

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    Actually, since you're making your own maps you can probably do this with just a little work:

    Transparency is really just an alpha value in the albedo map. So assuming you have a transparency map and another texture map that the transparency decides what can be seen and what can't (or how visible it is or whatever), you could probably open both in Photoshop or Gimp and add the transparency map to the original texture as a new layer that just defines the alpha. Then you have the transparency map as part of the albedo map. One map instead of two.

    Haven't tried it myself but think it would probably work. Maybe someone else knows a better way.
     
    theANMATOR2b likes this.
  12. witch mignon

    witch mignon

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    Occlusion is creating detailed shadow making it look more realistic,

    Transparent map is............you can bake transparency information in other 3d apps, it is an independent map which can be adjusted in material slots. I don't think Unity has that slot. I rummaged about this on internet while I was waiting for answer, it seems there is no option for transparent map, just alpha layer in color map is available I guess.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2015
  13. Todd-Wasson

    Todd-Wasson

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    Yeah, it's not a separate map in Unity, I guess. You'll probably have to use the alpha channel on the albedo map.
     
  14. witch mignon

    witch mignon

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    Yes I guess that's the only option for transparency in unity.. adding alpha layer in color map and making the alpha available.

    hm............It's one way to go though it's new to me.

    anyway thx for all the replies and links :)
    I watched the video and read the doc, I think unity is different to unreal.
     
  15. Todd-Wasson

    Todd-Wasson

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    If you really, really want to use alpha maps, I'd try to look through all the shaders (click the "standard" shader at the top of the inspector and see all the options). There might be something in "Legacy Shaders." Don't know.

    I personally wouldn't recommend using those legacy shaders. The standard shaders are doing everything consistently with lighting and global illumination and so on, so it's probably going to be best to stick with that. If you just want to try something real quick since you just started, that might be the place to look though.