My journey becoming a Unity game developer: Environment & Lighting-Sub Meshes
Objective: Showing how different materials can be used on each mesh of a single game object.
Let’s start with the Column-start, in particular the Gold Decor in the middle of the column. We will select the decor, then under Mesh Renderer and under Materials add the Gold_Mat material to it. Before I do this, I’m going to select a couple of different materials just to see how each looks on the decor. Notice the actual materials create by artists compared to regular materials have light reflecting off them. This is a key element of materials in how light data is stored on these materials compared to some regular color being used as a material.
To add a material to the outer part of the column, start with right-clicking on your Material folder and selecting Create->Material. Name it Black_mat and change the Shader to Standard. I’m using Standard(Specular setup) because it was easier to see in these demonstrations. Regular Standard allows you to use the Metallic setting and Standard Specular doesn’t use the Metallic setting instead relying on specular color to control the color and strength of specular reflections in the material.
Click on the little circle next to Albedo and select the Black Marble Column. Click back on Column-start , go to Mesh Renderer and drag the Black_mat material to Element 0.
Now the Column-start is different from the other column if we look at the material patterns because the Tiling and Offset are different. To make it look the same as the other, go to Mesh Renderer inside the other column and copy the component values. Head back to Column-start Mesh Renderer and paste the component values.
To make Column-start look different from the other one, start by going to the Mesh Renderer and in Element 1 either drag the Black Marble Column material into its slot or click on the little circle in the element and select the material. You should now see the inside of the column have the material applied to it.
For the outside, create a new material and name it White_wall_mat. In the Albedo, select the White Marble texture to apply it. Set the Shader to Standard, Metallic to zero, and Smoothness to a low setting. Go back to Column-start and place the White_wall_mat material into Element 0. Now the outer column should have a white marble appearance.
At the end of the day, it’s all about experimenting with the materials. It’s important to communicate with the artists or if you’re an indie game developer to know how to modify your materials on your game objects.
