Problem with line renderer material

Questions & Answers
1

I am trying to just add a material to the line that is rendered but I am only seeing a magenta line. The material is in the project and so it is not missing, but yet the line renderer just seems to ignore the material I have assigned to it. Code show below;

var startWidth = 0.05;
var endWidth = 0.05;
var aMaterial : Material;

private var line : LineRenderer;

function Start ()
{
   line = this.gameObject.AddComponent(LineRenderer);
   //line.material = new Material (Shader.Find("Particles/Additive"));
   line.SetWidth(startWidth, endWidth);
   line.SetVertexCount(2);   
   line.material = aMaterial;
   line.renderer.enabled = true;
}

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

4

I know this is an old post but might help someone else. To get the built in start / end colors this is what I did. Not that this is a very quick solution.

  1. Create an Empty object
  2. Add component > Effects> Line Renderer
  3. Create a material
  4. Change the Shader Particles Alpha Blend. Particles>Alpha Blend.
  5. Add the Material to Line Renderer Materials

Most of the particle shaders will work but Alpha blend gave me the best look. I didn’t have to do any coding for this part. Only code I had to display the line was setting the positions.

///------------------------------
LineRenderer lr;

Void Start()
{
      lr = GetComponent<LineRenderer>();
      lr.SetPositions(points); //points=an array of points(Vector3)
}
///------------------------------------------
2

First of all, this line = this.gameObject.AddComponent(LineRenderer); should be this line = this.gameObject.AddComponent();. Argument of the AddComponent should be empty, only the type assignment operators <> to define its type. But that’s not going to solve your problem.

I’ve been stuck with the same problem but luckily I found a solution. You’ll need a simple, constant, self-illuminating material (so NOT one of the Particle materials) and assign that one to the lineRenderer (this works best in the editor).

  • Add a LineRenderer component to the gameobject via the Unity Editor

  • Change this: line = this.gameObject.AddComponent(LineRenderer); to this:

    line = gameObject.GetComponent();

  • Make a new material with a Self-Illumin/Diffuse and assign a color to it (no texture!)

  • Assign the new material to the LineRenderer component in the Unity Editor

This worked for me, hopefully you’ll be helped with this too :slight_smile:

3

Self-Illumin/Diffuse didn’t work well for me. This 6 line shader taken from another similar question did tho: Shader needed for gradients using a LineRenderer - Questions & Answers - Unity Discussions

Shader "Vertex Colors" {
 Subshader {
  BindChannels {
    Bind "vertex", vertex
    Bind "color", color 
  }
  Pass {}
 }
}