Embedding objects inside a material

Question

I have a shader that takes a gradient texture as an input.

I have a custom material editor that allows me to input gradients into a Unity gradient field.

The gradient is converted into a texture and set in the shader.

However once I click play, the texture disappears.

Also the gradient disappears when I change the selected object or click play.

I read a bit on AssetDatabase.AddObjectToAsset thinking that perhaps I could embed the texture and the object that holds the gradients.

Ideally I should have:

-In editor I can change the gradients which change the textures. The gradients are always saved so I can return and tweak it.

-In a build the textures should already exist. I don't want to create a texture at runtime

Does anyone have any ideas around this? I want to not create extra assets.

alt text

Answer 1

You can use AssetDatabase.AddObjectToAsset as well as AssetDatabase.CreateAsset to save the textures.

After creating these assets make sure to assign the texture reference to the material field and then do a AssetDatabase.ImportAsset, Every time you do some modification to the objects do a EditorUtility.SetDirty([your asset]) to unity know that asset needs to be saved.

I have an editor script that does something similar with materials and custom textures. Later I will post it here.

Edit

using UnityEngine; using UnityEditor;

 [CustomEditor(typeof(MyCustomScriptableObject))]
 public class MyCustomEditor : Editor
 {
     MyCustomScriptableObject edit;
 
     // Use this for initialization
     void Awake()
     {
         edit = target as MyCustomScriptableObject;
     }
 
     public override void OnInspectorGUI()
     {
         EditorGUI.BeginChangeCheck();
 
            DrawDefaultInspector();
 
         // if any thing changes the texture will be rebuild
         if (EditorGUI.EndChangeCheck())
         {
             Create();
             EditorUtility.SetDirty (edit);
             EditorUtility.SetDirty (edit.texture);
         }
     }
 
     void Create()
     {
             var pixels = texture.GetPixels ();
             var length = lights.Length;
 
             // update texture
             for (var x = 0; x < texture.width; x++) {
                 for (var y = 0; y < texture.height; y++) {
                     //pixels[y*texture.width + x] = ...;
                 }
             }
 
             texture.SetPixels (pixels);
             texture.Apply();
     }
 
     [MenuItem("Assets/Create/Some Asset")]
     public static void CreateAsset()
     {
         // create asset with the right at selected folder
         // search for ScriptableObjectUtility in unity wiki for this script
         var asset = ScriptableObjectUtility.CreateAsset<MyCustomScriptableObject>();
 
         // creating the texture
         var texture = new Texture2D(256, 128, TextureFormat.RGB24, false, false);
         texture.name = "texture";
         texture.wrapMode = TextureWrapMode.Clamp;
 
         asset.texture = texture;
 
         // save the texture
         AssetDatabase.AddObjectToAsset(texture, asset);
         AssetDatabase.ImportAsset(AssetDatabase.GetAssetPath(asset));
     }
 }

Embedding objects inside a material

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