Unity / How to add a shader to a material via c# script?

Question

I found already some things - but those seem not quite what I need. (perhaps outdated functions?)

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Material-shader.html

here, it seems you can add a shader to a renderer:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class ExampleClass : MonoBehaviour {
    public Shader shader1;
    public Shader shader2;
    public Renderer rend;
    void Start() {
        rend = GetComponent<Renderer>();
        shader1 = Shader.Find("Diffuse");
        shader2 = Shader.Find("Transparent/Diffuse");
    }
    void Update() {
        if (Input.GetButtonDown("Jump"))
            if (rend.material.shader == shader1)
                rend.material.shader = shader2;
            else
                rend.material.shader = shader1;

    }
}

well - i dont have a renderer. i only have a material.

and there is no "material.setShader" , only a material.setTexture"

sooo can anyone solve this mystery of how to add a shader to a material via script?

Answer 1

If you already have a reference to the material and the shader then you just need to do this: myMaterial.shader = myShader; There's nothing more to it than that.

The Unity Material API says that the shader property is public so you can just use = instead of finding some "set" method. There is an explicit "set" and "get" function for textures on materials because they can have more than one so they're identified with a name or id.

In your example with the renderer, it's just getting the material from the renderer and doing the same exact thing I mentioned above. This code...

rend.material.shader = myShader;

has the same results as this code...

Material myMaterial = rend.material;
myMaterial.shader = myShader;