My journey becoming a Unity game developer: Environment & Lighting-Albedo Channel

Objective: Showing the difference between using the color picker or using a texture in the albedo channel. Making simple adjustments to the material in the Shader component.

We’re going to click on the Pillar_start game object. In the Inspector, go down to the Shader component. If you have a game object that you want to use simple colors on, click on the Color box next to Albedo. Pick which color you would like to use and see how the color looks on the object.

Using the Color picker to add color to the game object.

Now if you’re working with an artist who created textures for the game objects themselves, you won’t use color on the objects but instead you will add these textures onto the objects. Click the little circle next to the word Albedo and you will see all the textures in your Assets folder. Select the texture for the appropriate object, in this case we will select the Black Marble Column texture. You should now see the black marble design patterns on the column.

Using Albedo, added the Black Marble Column texture to the column game object.

There is also 2 settings that can be used to adjust the texture’s pattern which is Tiling and Offset. It’s used for affecting and customizing how the UV’s are manipulated in the texture.

Using the Tiling and Offset to adjust the texture’s pattern.

Another 2 settings that can be used on the texture’s appearance is Metalic and Roughness. Metalic will make the texture look less or more glossy and Roughness determines how smooth or rough it looks.

Using Metalic and Roughness settings

There is a drop-down menu next to the Shader name that will assign a shader asset to the material on the object. In the menu, you will find shader assets that you can choose to change the look of the material on the object.

Using different Shader assets on the pillar game object.