change material in children

Question

I have a GameObject which has no renderer it's self, rather everything is a child, they all share the same material. Instead of listing vars for each child in the GameObject, I would rather loop a for that runs through the children and applies the correct material when that prefab is instantiated. Thing is, documentation on this exact process is thin on the ground. How does a for loop work in this case??

 var frog : GameObject;
     var randomMatNum : int = Random.Range(1, 5);
     var randomMat : Material;
     var greenFrog : Material;
     var blueFrog : Material;
     var pinkFrog : Material;
     var yellowFrog : Material;
     
     if (randomMatNum == 1) randomMat = greenFrog;
     else if (randomMatNum == 2) randomMat = blueFrog;
     else if (randomMatNum == 3) randomMat = pinkFrog;
     else if (randomMatNum == 4) randomMat = yellowFrog;
     
     
     
     for (var frogChild in frog.GetComponentInChildren(Renderer))
     {
         frogChild.material = randomMat;
     }

Get an error, not sure how this is done TBH.

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by Kleptomaniac · Mar 10, 2012 at 10:52 AM

Hey there! Don't worry you're almost there.

In terms of the for loop, you're close: you shouldn't need to use a GetComponentInChildren to access their renderers, using .render.material shoul work just fine. As for accessing the children themselves, you would use for (var frogChild : Transform in transform) {, accessing any children (Transforms) within the object the script is attached to.

Also, I suggest instead of using separate variables for each material, use a Material[] array. That way you could assign all your different materials to a single var in the inspector, and then use your Random.Range to return the element of that number.

All in all, your script should end up looking like this:

 var randomMatNum : int = Random.Range(1, 5);
 var randomMat : Material[];
 
 function Update () {
 
     for (var frogChild: Transform in transform) {
         frogChild.renderer.material = randomMat[randomMatNum];
     }
 }

Have fun with your game! Klep

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hawken-2 · Mar 10, 2012 at 11:13 AM 0

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Thanks! This did the trick, I'll post the code I used below:

Kleptomaniac · Mar 10, 2012 at 11:22 AM 0

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Sweet! No worries, happy to help!

Answer 2

Answer by Paulius-Liekis · Mar 10, 2012 at 10:41 AM

What error do you get? Your loop has GetComponentInChildren instead of GetComponentsInChildren (plural).

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Answer 3

Answer by hawken-2 · Mar 10, 2012 at 11:13 AM

 var randomFrogMat : Material[];
 
 function Start() {
     var randomMatNum : int = Random.Range(0, 4);
     for (var frogChild: Transform in transform) {
            frogChild.renderer.material = randomFrogMat[randomMatNum];
     }
 }

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change material in children

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