How can I change the color of an object's material, not generate another instance of the material, and still keep batching?

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Hi,

I'm trying to optimize my drawcalls on an iPhone project, and it's my understanding that changing the material color generates a new material instance and hence another drawcall.

I read in the forums that using a VertexLit shader and modifying vertex colors will let you change the color of an object and still keep it dynamically batched.

I don't know much about shaders, but in my code I am modifying the "material.color" property, thinking thats how you change the Vertex colors. It's still creating a new material though, so I must be doing something wrong.

So given two objects that share the same material, object A and object B. How can I make: A = red B = blue and still keep batching?

here is a code snippet of how i'm currently doing it

function Start() { thisMaterial = renderer.material; origColor = thisMaterial.color; fadeToColor = origColor;

 if (unitType &gt; 0)
    fadeToColor.b = 1;
 else if (unitType &lt; 0)
    fadeToColor.r = 1;

function Update() { if (unitType != 0) thisMaterial.color = Color.Lerp(origColor, fadeToColor, Mathf.PingPong(Time.time, 1)); }

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by Eric5h5 · Apr 24, 2010 at 12:37 PM

You have to change vertex colors by changing the actual colors of the vertex color array from a mesh. Changing material.color only changes the color of the material.

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Answer 2

Answer by Dylan Fitterer · May 26, 2010 at 07:29 PM

You could render them with individual colors in one batch using Graphics.DrawMesh and MaterialPropertyBlock: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/MaterialPropertyBlock.html

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How can I change the color of an object's material, not generate another instance of the material, and still keep batching?

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