CODEWITHSUNDEEP
unity-game-engineunityscript
Tak
Tak

Reputation: 3616

Color submeshes in unity3d

I have a main_mesh that has 10 submeshes, I wonder how I can change the color of of these submeshes to a different color (e.g submesh1 will have a red color, submesh2 will have a blue color,...etc). Any advise please?

UPDATE:

This is how I'm getting my mesh which has 10 submeshes:

        SkinnedMeshRenderer smr  = gameobject1.GetComponent<SkinnedMeshRenderer>();
        Mesh main_mesh = smr.sharedMesh;

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1954

Answers (2)

Gary Olsson
Gary Olsson

Reputation: 1217

Since you've added the tag Unityscript i'll assume that you want to be able to change submeshes inside a script.

Assignation as parameter

The first solution would be to have add a public parameter to you script that would be an array of Mesh. Then assign manually each submesh to the array through the inspector. Now you can access the material of each mesh and change it's color.

 public class MyScript : MonoBehaviour {
     public Mesh[] submeshes;

     // Update is called once per frame
     void Update () {
         for (int i = 0; submeshes[i]; i++) {
            // Return the first material of the mesh renderer, use .materials if multiple Material are applied
            submeshes[i].renderer.material.color = Color.red; 
         }
     }
 }

Note that I used Mesh as type for my array, but you could directly use Material if you only want to change the color.
Also, if submeshes have the exact same material, It'll change the color for all submeshes, not just one. You need to have one material per mesh. While this solution is not viable if your number of submeshes change dynamically, this solution is pretty simple and straighforwarded.

Use children

Instead of assigning every submeshes manually, you can dynamically change the color by accessing children

 public class MyScript : MonoBehaviour {
     public Mesh myObject;

     // Update is called once per frame
     void Update () {
         Material[] array = myObject.GetComponentsInChildren<Material>();
         for (int i = 0; array[i]; i++) {
            array[i].color = Color.red; 
         }
     }
 }

This solution allows you to have N material assigned to your submeshes. Here is the documentation for GetComponentsInChildren

Edit

Short answer
If you want a specific answer to your case, it depends on the materials and shaders assigned to your skinned Mesh Renderer because they can override or alter your childrens' materials. If not, the below code should work.

SkinnedMeshRenderer smr  = gameobject1.GetComponent<SkinnedMeshRenderer>();
Mesh main_mesh = smr.sharedMesh;
Mesh[] submeshes = main_mesh.GetComponentsInChildren<Mesh>();
for (int i = 0; submeshes[i]; i++) {
  // If your submesh already have a material, remove the first line below !
  submeshes[i].renderer.material = new Material(Shader.Find("Diffuse"));
  submeshes[i].renderer.material.color = Color.red; 
}

This solution create a new material for each submesh, which is quite brutal.
In the inspector, you should assign one material to each submeshes and then use always the same material with different colors.

In case it doesn't work
When you want to change the color of one specific mesh, this mesh needs to have his own material. The color of the mesh will depends on this materials and it's properties (shaders, textures, colors).

With a Skinned Mesh Renderer, you generally use Diffuse Material with textures to apply colors to one complex mesh. In some case, this mesh apply the color to it's childrens.
When using a Skinned Mesh Renderer, you usually use a UV texture. This particular texture is created based on your 3D object and is used to apply multiple color on it (sometimes also it's childrens). Here is a simple example of UV texture and here is a more complex example.

Note that, as a mesh Renderer, a skinned mesh renderer can have multiple materials which make the situation more complex but the principle remains the same.

    SkinnedMeshRenderer smr  = gameobject1.GetComponent<SkinnedMeshRenderer>();
    Mesh main_mesh = smr.sharedMesh;

With your code if main_mesh use a UV texture, you have two solutions

  • Remove the texture then apply a color to it's children
  • Create a specific UV texture which apply colors as you want.

Upvotes: 1

Jayson Ash
Jayson Ash

Reputation: 709

SkinnedMeshRenderer smr  = gameobject1.GetComponent<SkinnedMeshRenderer>();
Mesh main_mesh = smr.sharedMesh;

smr.materials[0].color = Color.red;   // Change submesh1 to red color
smr.materials[1].color = Color.blue;  // Change submesh2 to blue color
...
smr.materials[n].color = ...          // Change submesh n to whatever color

Upvotes: 2

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