Materials and customization

Materials control most of a planet’s appearance. Copy a supplied material before editing it so you retain a working preset and avoid changing every object that shares the original.

Make an independent look

1. Select the target renderer and inspect Mesh Renderer > Materials.
2. Click its material to locate the asset in the Project window. Read Shader to confirm the layer you are changing.
3. Duplicate the material into your own folder, such as Assets/MyPlanets/Materials/.
4. Give the copy a useful name, then drag it into the same renderer slot.
5. Repeat for the atmosphere, rings or corona only when you need those layers to differ too.

Duplicating a prefab alone does not make its material assets independent. Two objects assigned the same material share its edits. Keep custom assets outside Assets/FORGE3D/Planets/ so template reimports do not overwrite them.

Tune from broad shapes to fine detail

Order	Work on	What to check
1	Camera, main light and background	A readable day/night division and enough room for shells
2	Main colors and layer masks	Ground/water balance, ice ramp, gas bands or molten regions
3	Texture scales and normal strength	Useful detail at the intended camera distance
4	Clouds, shadows and animation	Visible surface, coherent motion and restrained shadow shaping
5	Highlights, rim and scatter	Detail remains readable on lit and dark sides
6	Atmosphere, city/lighting emission or corona	Effects support the scene palette without washing it out

Change one setting at a time and compare from the same camera. Use the Shader Reference for exact labels, interactions and illustrated examples.

Colors, masks and values

A color can be hidden by a mask or a later layer. If Base Color does not change the result, inspect terrain coverage, water and clouds before assuming that the setting is inactive. Alpha is significant in some colors: Lava’s Specular Color, Transparent Ring’s Ring Tint and Sun’s Hot are important examples.

Coverage usually moves a layer threshold; Factors shapes its transition. An exponent can change contrast strongly rather than act like a brightness slider. A Height Map controls material detail and blending here; it does not create terrain geometry.

Use a supplied preset as the recovery point. A new material made directly from shader defaults may have black colors, zero scales or invalid combinations. Do not treat every exposed zero or slider endpoint as a useful artistic setting.

Changing textures

Keep the supplied maps during your first variation. When replacing one, preserve its role: some textures are colored art, while others store masks or coordinates in specific channels. Keep normal maps imported as normal maps. Use Technical reference before changing packed masks or the supplied mesh.

At runtime, create and clean up material instances deliberately. See Runtime materials for a slot-specific Unity API example.