Material overrides using C#

Entities Graphics supports per-entity overrides of various HDRP and URP material properties as well as overrides for custom Shader Graphs. You can write C#/Burst code to setup and animate material override values at runtime.

Built-in Material overrides

Entities Graphics contains a built-in library of IComponentData components that you can add to your entities to override their material properties.

Supported HDRP Material overrides:

• AlphaCutoff
• AORemapMax
• AORemapMin
• BaseColor
• DetailAlbedoScale
• DetailNormalScale
• DetailSmoothnessScale
• DiffusionProfileHash
• EmissiveColor
• Metallic
• Smoothness
• SmoothnessRemapMax
• SmoothnessRemapMin
• SpecularColor
• Thickness
• ThicknessRemap
• UnlitColor (HDRP/Unlit)

Supported URP Material overrides:

• BaseColor
• BumpScale
• Cutoff
• EmissionColor
• Metallic
• OcclusionStrength
• Smoothness
• SpecColor

If you want to override a built-in HDRP or URP property not listed here, you can do that with custom Shader Graph Material overrides.

Custom Shader Graph Material overrides

You can create your own custom Shader Graph properties, and expose them to ECS as IComponentData. This allows you to write C#/Burst code to setup and animate your own shader inputs. To do this, see the following steps:

Shader Graph Asset

1. Select your Shader Graph custom property and view it in the Graph Inspector.
2. Open the Node Settings tab.
3. Enable Override Property Declaration then set Shader Declaration to Hybrid Per Instance.
   

IComponentData

For the IComponentData struct, use the MaterialProperty Attribute, passing in the Reference and type for the Shader Graph property. For example, the IComponentData for the color (float4) property in the above step would be:

[MaterialProperty("_Color")]
public struct MyOwnColor : IComponentData
{
   public float4 Value;
}

Ensure that the Reference name in Shader Graph and the string name in MaterialProperty attribute match exactly.

Burst C# system

Now you can write Burst C# system to animate your Material property:

class AnimateMyOwnColorSystem : SystemBase
{
   protected override void OnUpdate()
  {
       Entities.ForEach((ref MyOwnColor color, in MyAnimationTime t) =>
          {
               color.Value = new float4(
                   math.cos(t.Value + 1.0f),
                   math.cos(t.Value + 2.0f),
                   math.cos(t.Value + 3.0f),
                   1.0f);
          })
          .Schedule();
  }
}

Important: You need to create a matching IComponentData struct for every custom Shader Graph property that has Hybrid Per Instance enabled. For information on how to do this, see IComponentData. If you don't do this for a custom property, Entities Graphics zero fills the property.