(SOLVED) What standard shader will do what I want ...

First off, I am pretty confused when it comes to textures, materials and shaders.
And, I need a shader that will allow the following features:
1) The texture will have a solid color area and a transparent area.
2) Programmatically, the solid color portion of the texture must be able to have its color changed.
3) Programmatically, the transparency of the solid color portion of the texture must be adjustable.

Is there a standard shader that allows all of this?

Thanks.
-- Paul

 

You'd have to make a custom Surface shader for that, which will allow you to essentially easily make a copy of the Standard shader, but only using the inputs/outputs you want to assign to.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-SurfaceShaderExamples.html

You'll define a

_Tint

color like they show in some of the examples there.
When you sample the color of your

_MainTex

in the

surf()

program, you'll store it in a variable such as:

fixed4 col = tex2D (_MainTex, IN.uv_MainTex);

Then you can simply do:

if(col.a == 1) { col *= _Tint; }

This will only tint the existing color though, which is fine if you expect your solid color to be white, then it will always be the color you set in your

_Tint

.
Otherwise, you'll have to split that into 2 lines.

col.a *= _Tint.a;

and

col.rgb = _Tint.rgb;

to completely replace the color instead of tint it.

And then finally, like in the examples, assign the values to the right outputs:

o.Albedo = col.rgb;

o.Alpha = col.a;

There are other outputs, like o.Normal, Smoothness, Roughness, Occlusion... etc that you can output to if you plan to use those kinds of textures too, as defined on this page.

 

Invertex,
Thanks for that detailed and illuminating response.
I did actually find what I needed by using the Text/GUI (?) shader.
However, I am going to copy/paste your response into my "keep" file.
I may actually try what you suggest, just as an exercise, since I am such a noob with shaders, etc.

Thanks again.
-- Paul