How to change material without creating a new material instance?

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Using renderer.material = myOtherMaterial; will create a new instance of myOtherMaterial

I need it to be the same instance so GPU instancing will work.

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Answer by Bunny83 · Apr 29, 2020 at 12:23 AM

You have to use sharedMaterial / sharedMaterials instead of material / materials.

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Smaika · Apr 29, 2020 at 12:26 AM 0

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I see, but myOther$$anonymous$$aterial is a variable so how would I do that? Calling renderer.shared$$anonymous$$aterial = myOther$$anonymous$$aterial; will still cause a new instance of the material to be created

Bunny83 Smaika · Apr 29, 2020 at 10:10 AM 0

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No, it won't. When you assign a material instance to shared$$anonymous$$aterial Unity will just use that material. Note that you must not touch material or materials even once. This is also true for reading. As soon as you read or write anything from / to the material property Unity will instantiate the currently assigned material for this renderer.

Smaika · Apr 29, 2020 at 12:15 PM 0

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Oh thanks, I didn't notice that I was reading the material at a later point

Bazilikum · May 06, 2021 at 07:41 AM 0

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I am facing the same issue, and as far as I can see .material and .shared material call the same function inside the setter in the Renderer class. The only solution I have found is to treat it as setting a material on a renderer will always create a new instance. Perhaps this is a bug?

Bazilikum · May 06, 2021 at 08:45 AM 0

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I am also facing the same problem, and as far as I looked into the Renderer.CS file, both Renderer.material and Renderer.sharedMateral set function calls the same internal function. WIthout changing any material properties, it is still creating a new material instance for me. I suggest you test this out as well.

How to change material without creating a new material instance?

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