Pulse sprite using material emission - doesn't show until I click in inspector

Unity Engine
1

I have made a script that pulses between 0 and 1 to set emissions of an attached sprite render object’s material.

I use this following code:

    private void PulseItem()
    {
        Color baseColor = Color.yellow;
        float emission = Mathf.PingPong (Time.time, 1.0f);
        _mat.SetColor("_EmissionColor", baseColor * emission);
    }

The code doesn’t work until I click the shader in the inspector. Is this a bug?

2

This is an oddity! Anybody have any ideas?

3

what ?