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Official Material Variants now available in Unity 2022.1

Discussion in 'General Graphics' started by Matjio, Jun 10, 2022.

  1. Matjio

    Matjio

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2014
    Posts:
    89


    Welcome to the Material Variants discussion thread. You can use this thread to ask for help, share feedback, and have discussions about this new feature available in Unity 2022.1.

    We are super excited to introduce this new system (which has been requested for a long time and quite highly voted on our public roadmap!) to manage variants of materials at scale!

    It allows for reuse and improve management of materials that share most surface properties and differ only through others (think "Prefabs for Materials").

    You can read more about it in our documentation and blog post.

    Once you have tinkered with the system, please take 5 minutes to fill our poll that will help us validate the quality of our initial design.

    Best,
    The Unity Graphics Team
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2022
    Matjio, Jun 10, 2022
    #1
    AnteNomspa, DragonCoder, NotaNaN and 3 others like this.

  2. Lars-Steenhoff

    Lars-Steenhoff

    Joined:
    Aug 7, 2007
    Posts:
    3,289
    Really nice new feature!

    I'm going to make full use of it, thanks!

    ( About the survey, sorry not doing those, as there is too much data mining questions that have nothing todo with the material variants, like the first questions about organisation etc. I may be wrong but I feel like if I don't put there an organisation with millions of revenue my answers will not be valued the same )
     
    Lars-Steenhoff, Aug 6, 2022
    #2
    michalpiatek and florianBrn like this.

  3. Sisay

    Sisay

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    Dec 6, 2012
    Posts:
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    Material variant increases the number of draw calls.
    Property block has more efficiency?
     
    Sisay, Aug 8, 2022
    #3

  4. koirat

    koirat

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    Material variants are for workflow, not optimization.
    Every variant is like separate material.
     
    koirat, Aug 9, 2022
    #4

  5. PutridEx

    PutridEx

    Joined:
    Feb 3, 2021
    Posts:
    1,081
    The system of material variants exists only in the editor for better workflow/QoL.
    I believe in the background, for a built game, each "variant" is a new material.

    It's mentioned in the blog if you want more information.
     
    PutridEx, Aug 9, 2022
    #5

  6. Sisay

    Sisay

    Joined:
    Dec 6, 2012
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    a bit strange, so the script with c # and property block changing values gives me 1 material on many objects and the system written by unity gives only utility in the editor :(
     
    Sisay, Aug 9, 2022
    #6

  7. michalpiatek

    michalpiatek

    Joined:
    Feb 26, 2021
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    Is there any way I can batch-convert a series of existing materials to be children of another material that uses the same shader? I'd really like to use material variants on the project I'm working on right now but I have 200+ materials that I'd like to all be child materials of one master material. Would take quite some time to convert by hand :rolleyes: Maybe there's something I can add to the YAML to do this?
     
    michalpiatek, Aug 10, 2022
    #7

  8. koirat

    koirat

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    If serialization of material variants is as "brilliant" as serialization of prefab variants than I would not stick my fingers into it.
     
    koirat, Aug 10, 2022
    #8

  9. mitaywalle

    mitaywalle

    Joined:
    Jul 1, 2013
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    Material variants are great. Can we have ScriptableObject variants?
     
    mitaywalle, Sep 28, 2022
    #9
    michalpiatek likes this.

  10. michalpiatek

    michalpiatek

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    Feb 26, 2021
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    +1 for this. It would be incredibly useful.

    Also +1 for replying my previous question about converting materials to variants, please?
     
    michalpiatek, Sep 28, 2022
    #10

  11. joshcamas

    joshcamas

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    Jun 16, 2017
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    This is fantastic! Anything that reduces data copying is a huge + for me. Scriptable Objects being next would definitely be great ;)
     
    joshcamas, Sep 28, 2022
    #11

  12. AnteNomspa

    AnteNomspa

    Joined:
    Dec 13, 2020
    Posts:
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    @Matjio I started updating the Measured Materials Library (We have you covered with the Measured Materials Library | Unity Blog) a month ago for Unity 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Since I am still working on the 2019 URP version I am glad I found this forum before I started on the other versions, which I will probably cancel now, as the variants solution is way better. Looking at the image you used at the start of the thread I am wondering if you are also updating (extending) the Measured Materials Library using material variants (which should make it a lot easier as you can just create the master materials and base variant of those)?

    If not, do you mind if I would update it to a variants version and is there a way I can get the model that you are using in the example at the start of this thread? I am currently using the older Unity ball model for previews.
     
    AnteNomspa, Mar 3, 2023
    #12

  13. Unifikation

    Unifikation

    Joined:
    Jan 4, 2023
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    This feature seems to have broken the copying of Material properties from and to TextMeshPro materials and broken the Create Preset Material feature of TextMeshPro, too.
     
    Unifikation, Mar 18, 2023
    #13