All the parameters of a material asset that you see in the Inspector window are accessible via script, giving you the power to change or animate how a material works at runtime.
This allows you to modify numeric values on the material, change colours, and swap textures dynamically during gameplay. Some of the most commonly used functions to do this are:
| Function Name | Use |
|---|---|
| SetColor | Change the color of a material (Eg. the albedo tint color) |
| SetFloat | Set a floating point value (Eg. the normal map multiplier) |
| SetInt | Set an integer value in the material |
| SetTexture | Assign a new texture to the material |
The full set of functions available for manipulating materials via script can be found on the Material class scripting reference.
One important note is that these functions only set properties that are available for the current Unity shader on the material. This means that if you have a shader that doesn’t use any textures, or if you have no shader bound at all, calling SetTexture will have no effect. This is true even if you later set a shader that needs the texture. For this reason it is recommended to set the shader you want before setting any properties, however once you’ve done that you can switch from one shader to another that use the same textures or properties and values will be preserved.
These functions work as you would expect for all simple shaders such as the legacy shaders, and the built-in shaders other than the Standard Shader (for example, the particle, sprite, UI and unlit shaders). For a material using the Standard Shader however, there are some further requirements which you must be aware of before being able to fully modify the material.