Is there a way to change sharedMaterial without affecting prefabs?

Hi:

So I have a procedurally made maze with dozens and even hundreds of instances of wall objects sharing same material. When map button is pressed, an ortographic camera renders the current state of the maze from top view, and I'm changing walls and floor textures to black and white to see it more clearly. To avoid hardware stress (important since this is a mobile game), I'm changing sharedMaterial.mainTexture of the walls when in map view, saving original Textures and switching back to them when leaving map view. The problem is, if I exit game while in map view, wall prefab textures have changed forever.

After reading a lot, some people advice to use a copy of the material but this isn't working for me because I must loop through all wall instances, and I don't want this. If I don't loop I must use sharedMaterial directly, so I change prefabs materials.

Other people advice to use MaterialPropertyBlocks, but it's the same problem, I must loop through all the intances. I'm not worried about looping through hundreds of objects, the real problem is batching render is gone.

So, is there a way to change sharedMaterial without affecting the prefab or changing every object material in a loop?

Code (CSharp):

1. // This will change prefab if exiting game while in map view mode
2.  
3. // when entering map view mode
4. wallMat = wallObject.GetComponent<MeshRenderer>().sharedMaterial;
5. backUpTex = wallMat.mainTexture;
6. wallMat.mainTexture = blackTexture;
7.  
8. // when exiting map view mode
9. wallMat.mainTexture = backUpTex;

Code (CSharp):

1. // This will only change wallObject material, not all the other instances sharing material
2.  
3. // when entering map view mode
4. Material copyMat = new Material(wallMat);
5. wallObject.GetComponent<MeshRenderer>().sharedMaterial = copyMat;
6. copyMat.mainTexture = blackTexture;
7.  
8. // when exiting map view mode
9. wallObject.GetComponent<MeshRenderer>().sharedMaterial = wallMat;

 

I've done the same thing before. Just add some code that runs at the beginning of the scene to set the SharedMaterial texture to what it's supposed to start off as. You could also try setting it back in OnApplicationQuit
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.OnApplicationQuit.html

I'm pretty sure this only a problem in the editor, though.

 

Well, switching back textures on OnApplicationQuit event is not working, but if the problem only exists in editor then it should be OK. Anyway I don't understand the point of this behaviour in editor but not in compiled version. It makes no sense to me. I will test in mobile and report back.

 

fill a bug report

 

I almost forgot this. I have tried it in mobile and it's true: SharedMaterial.mainTexture won't change in mobile version.

 

MaterialPropertyBlocks not work with SRPBatch