Cycling Through a list of Materials

Unity Engine
,
1

I am trying to build a stereo 360 photo sphere. I want the user to be able to swipe through different environments. To test I want to use the left and right arrow, and later integrate some sort of hand tracking using Oculus Quest.

For now, I am trying to build a script to hold the Materials and control which material is displayed. My initial questions are:

  1. Is there a way to, instead of saying 'Right Arrow goes to Material 1" it can say “Right Arrow goes to the next material in the list”

  2. I cant seem to get the audio clip field active

Any help is very appreciated!

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;
public class EnvironmentLibrary : MonoBehaviour
{
    //public List<Environment> m_materials = null;
    public Material[] materials;
    Renderer rend;
    //public class Environment
    [Serializable]
    public class Environment
    {
        public Material m_Background = null;
        public AudioClip m_AmbientNoise = null;
    }
    void Start()
    {
        rend = GetComponent<Renderer>();
        rend.enabled = true;
        rend.sharedMaterial = materials[0];
    }
    private void Update()
    {
        if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.RightArrow))
        {
            rend.sharedMaterial = materials[1];
        }
        if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.LeftArrow))
        {
            rend.sharedMaterial = materials[0];
        }
    }
}
2

Use an int (starting at 0) which increases or decreases by 1 every time you press the arrow keys. Then ensure it stays in the array bounds with a little modulus trick:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;
public class EnvironmentLibrary: MonoBehaviour
{
    //public List<Environment> m_materials = null;
    public Material[] materials;
    private int whichMaterial = 0; // can make public to debug

    Renderer rend;
    //public class Environment
    [Serializable]
    public class Environment
    {
        public Material m_Background = null;
        public AudioClip m_AmbientNoise = null;
    }
    void Start()
    {
        rend = GetComponent<Renderer>();
        rend.enabled = true;
        rend.sharedMaterial = materials[0];
    }
    private void Update()
    {
        if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.RightArrow))
        {
            whichMaterial++;
            rend.sharedMaterial = materials[Mathf.Abs(whichMaterial % materials.Length)];
        }
        if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.LeftArrow))
        {
            whichMaterial--;
            rend.sharedMaterial = materials[Mathf.Abs(whichMaterial % materials.Length)];
        }
    }
}
3

You should look into variables in C#, specifically integers. :slight_smile:

Arrays such as your materials above have a .Length property you can use to decide when you have wrapped or ended.

Well that’s not a lot to go on. AudioClips are not “Active” by themselves but rather played by AudioSources.

To help gain more insight into your problem, I recommend liberally sprinkling Debug.Log() statements through your code to display information in realtime.

Doing this should help you answer these types of questions:

  • is this code even running? which parts are running? how often does it run?
  • what are the values of the variables involved? Are they initialized?

Knowing this information will help you reason about the behavior you are seeing.

4

Ahh, this works very well!

Now, is there a way have one material fade to black, then have the new material fade up from black?

5

That’s trickier, maybe search around a bit and if you’re really stuck, make a new thread.