multiple meshes in a prefab and how to texture?

Questions & Answers
1

I expect I can place multiple meshes in a single prefab. And that the multiple meshes in the prefab will retain their position relative to each other as I rotate and display the prefab. Is this true?

In particular, I have a mesh of a space ship. I want to put an billboard (Unity plane) over each engine exhaust (there are 2 engine exhausts) and then place a texture with transparency on each billboard to simulate engine glow. I will update the engine glow texture every .05 seconds to get the flickering effect.

I do a 'renderer.material.mainTexture = shiptexture;' each frame to apply a texture to the ship mesh in the prefab.

My question is, if I have two billboards in the same prefab what is my code to apply a separate texture to each of the billboards (unity planes)?

Thanks for any help!

2

Each visible gameobject within your prefab will have its own renderer component, so you will have to find references to those components in your scripts in exactly the same way as you would any other component (even if it wasn't in a prefab).

For example, if your script that controls ship is also in charge of applying textures to these billboards, you might have something like this included in the script placed on your ship (assuming every ship has 2 exhausts, and they are named "Exhaust 1" and "Exhaust 2"):

var exhaust1 : Renderer;
var exhaust2 : Renderer;

function Start() {

    // we search the child objects connected to this ship to find the 2 exhausts:
    exhaust1 = transform.Find("Exhaust 1").renderer;
    exhaust2 = transform.Find("Exhaust 2").renderer;

}

function Update() {

    // the code which you use to make the exhaust flicker will include this:...
    exhaust1.material.maintexture = ....etc;
    exhaust1.material.maintexture = ....etc;

}

Alternatively (and I prefer this method) you might consider making a separate "Exhaust" script, and place it on the exhaust objects directly. This simplifies things in that you can simply reference the renderer directly, so your entire "Exhaust" script might look like this, including the billboarding code and the code to modulate the engine glow texture:

var glowTextures : Texture2D[];

function Start() {

    EngineFlicker();

    // billboard loop - runs every frame:
    while (true) {
        transform.rotation = Camera.main.transform.rotation;
        yield;
    }

}

function EngineFlicker() {

    // engine flicker loop - runs every half second:
    while (true) {
        renderer.material.mainTexture = glowTextures[Random.Range(0,glowTextures.Length)];
        yield WaitForSeconds(0.5);
    }
}