My journey becoming a Unity game developer: Make a game look beautiful-URP and Texture Maps

Objective: Change the original texture maps of the columns and walls to a darker, less shiny metallic look by using the GIMP image editor.

Final changes to the walls and columns texture.

We’re going to change the complexion of the walls and columns in the Control Room. One way we could do this is just change the color of the walls and columns through their prefabs.

Let’s click on one of the columns, and go to the children objects inside that Column 01 object. Select all the children objects, click on the Color setting under Surface Inputs. Select different colors for this column and notice that with each color change that the surface of the column remains shiny.

Changed the colors of the columns through Surface Inputs.

We’re going to use a different method to change the color and appearance of the columns, as well as the walls. We will make adjustments to the texture using an image editor, which in this case will be GIMP.

Click on a column in the Control Room, go into the texture folder under the Scifi Columns folder and select the Walls Columns Albedo Transparency texture. Right-click on this texture and select the Show in Explorer setting to see this texture file in the Explorer window. Drag this texture into the GIMP image editor as we’re going to make changes to this texture and save it as a new texture.

Placed texture map of a column into GIMP image editor.

Now let’s change the texture to a dull bluish tint color by going to Colors->Hue/Saturation. Drag the Hue slider to the blue color, and drag the Saturation slider down to make the texture have a very dull color.

Adjusted the Hue/Saturation to change the complexion of the column.

Let’s make this a new texture by using Save As, and saving this texture in the same location with the original texture in the Scifi Columns texture folder. Use the same name of the original folder, but add the name ‘blue’ at the end of the file’s name. Also, add the .png extension at the end of the file’s name to save this texture as a PNG file instead of the default .xcf extension. When we hit save, PNG will open us a special window saying “the given filename can’t be used for saving.”

Click on “Take me to the Export dialog” link to open the save window again. This time go to Select File Type(By Extension), and select PNG. Click the Export button, and another window will open with additional settings to choose from. Just click on the Export button once more to export this texture to the Scifi Columns texture folder.

Saved the new adjusted column image into the column’s Assets folder.

Back in Unity, click on one of the columns and select all of the children objects under Column 01 object. Place the new Walls Columns Albedo Transparency Blue texture inside the Base Map under the Shader material component.

Added the new column texture onto all of the column objects.

Select one of either Wall 01 or Wall 02 objects and select all of the children objects, and place the Walls Columns Albedo Transparency Blue texture onto the Base Map of the Scifi Floors 01_12 material to change the walls appearance.

Added new texture onto the walls through the Scifi Floors 01_12 material.

I went back in to make another adjustment to the Walls Columns Albedo Transparency Blue texture in GIMP. I made adjustments to the Hue/Lightness/Saturation to make the columns in particular less glossy. Also, we can use the Smoothness setting in the Scifi Floors 01_12 material to adjust the Metallic look of the columns.

Final adjustment made to the columns and walls using the Hue/Saturation/Lightness in GIMP.