Materials and customization
Start on the scene instance in the Hierarchy. The material slot tells you which asset drives the visible layer. A prefab name can differ from its material name, especially in the demo scenes.
Find the layer you want to change
Section titled “Find the layer you want to change”All paths below are relative to Assets/FORGE3D/Planets HDRP.
| To change | Select in the Hierarchy | Material to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Terrestrial land, water, clouds or cities | Planet_Terrestrial_01 | Terrestrial/Materials/Planet_Terrestrial_01.mat |
| Terrestrial limb | Planet_Terrestrial_01 > Atmosphere_Terrestrial_01 | Atmosphere/Atmosphere_Terrestrial_01.mat |
| Gas bands | Planet_Gas_01 | Gas/Materials/Planet_Gas_01.mat |
| Gas 01 ring | Planet_Gas_01 > Planet_Ring_01 | Gas/Materials/Planet_Ring_Gas_01.mat |
| Lava surface and magma | Planet_Lava_01 | Lava/Materials/Planet_Lava_03.mat |
| Solar surface or corona | Sun_Red or its StarCoronaPlate children | Sun/Materials/Sun_Red_01.mat or Sun/Materials/Sun_Corona_Red_01.mat |
On the selected object, expand Mesh Renderer > Materials and inspect Element 0. If a renderer has several slots, match the assigned material by name and check its Shader in the Inspector. On Terrestrial, the visible clouds and their shadows live in the surface material. Lightning also lives on the body material of a Thunderstorm planet.
Save a local look
Section titled “Save a local look”- Click the assigned material reference to locate the asset in the Project window.
- Duplicate the material with Ctrl+D on Windows or Cmd+D on macOS. Rename it, for example
Terrestrial_01_ThinClouds, and move it to your own project folder. - Drag the copy onto the matching slot in the scene object’s Mesh Renderer. Keep the other renderers on their original materials.
- Edit the copy and compare with a second untouched instance. Keep the original maps assigned for your first pass. Save the scene, or make a separate prefab variant if you want to reuse the look.
Editing a material asset affects every renderer that references it. A duplicate lets you work independently. Use Unity’s Material Variants when you want to inherit future parent changes and override selected fields.
Gas 01 with the body’s Tint changed from white to RGB (1, 0.44, 0.23). The ring keeps its own preset.
Replace maps with intent
Section titled “Replace maps with intent”Preserve the original texture type, color-space setting, wrapping and channel layout when replacing maps. Use a matching preset as the template for tiling and packed masks. See Surface appearance for a starting workflow and the Technical reference for common channels.
The guide expresses color channels as decimals, with 1 equal to full strength for an ordinary RGB channel. Use the HDR color picker’s intensity control for values above that level. Keep the supplied alpha unless the recipe changes it.