Create a material variant

Create a material that inherits properties from a parent material. For more information, refer to Material variants.

You can create a material variant from any material, including Shader Graph materials and Asset StoreA growing library of free and commercial assets created by Unity and members of the community. Offers a wide variety of assets, from textures, models and animations to whole project examples, tutorials and Editor extensions. More info
See in Glossary materials.

Create a new material variant

1. In the Project window, right-click on a material. This material becomes the parent material.
2. Select Create > Rendering > Material Variant.

Unity gives the material variant the same name as the parent material followed by Variant.

Add a parent material to an existing material

1. In the Project window, select the material you want to use as a parent.
2. Drag the material onto the material you want to convert into a material variant.

The receiving material becomes a variant of the parent material.

Parent materials can have multiple child materials.

Change the parent of a material variant

To change the parent of a material variant, also known as reparenting, use one of the following methods:

• In the Project window, drag the new parent material onto the material variant.

• Select the material variant, then use the foldout (triangle) at the top-right to open the Material Hierarchy window. To set the parent material, select the Parent picker (⊙).

  

A dialog appears to warn you if you try to create a circular dependency.

Convert a material variant back to a material

To remove the parent from a material variant so it becomes a regular material again, follow these steps:

1. In the Project window, select the material variant.
2. In the InspectorA Unity window that displays information about the currently selected GameObject, asset or project settings, allowing you to inspect and edit the values. More info
   See in Glossary window, open the More (⋮) menu next to the material name.
3. Select Flatten Material Variant.

You can also open the Material Hierarchy window, then select Material in the dropdown.

Delete a material variant

To delete a material variant, follow these steps:

1. In the Project window, select the material variant.
2. Press the Delete key.

If the material variant has child materials, a dialog appears. Select one of the following options:

• Delete and reparent children to automatically reassign the child materials to their closest ancestor, unless the material variant was at the top of the hierarchy.
• Delete only to delete the material variant without reassigning its child materials. Any child material left without a parent is invalid and will not load correctly at runtime.

Additional resources

• Introduction to materials
• Material.parent API
• Create variations of prefabs