[SOLVED] Apply Image to Plane Primitive

Unity Engine
1

Hi,

Id like to add a PNG image to a primitive plane game object using C#
This is simple in the editor as one can simply drag the image onto the plane, but i would like to create the plane dynamically at run-time and then add an image to it.

Can anyone help with this?

string imageString = “C:\testimage.png”);
Material mat = Resources.Load( imageString ) as Material; // <— Should it be material or texture2D?
plane = GameObject.CreatePrimitive(PrimitiveType.Plane);

Thanks

2

OK, let’s take it one step at a time.

First, Resources.Load takes a Unix-style path within the assets folder, not a Windows-style path to some file on your hard drive. So, which do you need to do? Get something from your project resources, or get something from a file on disk?

In the former case, move your asset and fix your path, and yes, it should be a Texture2D if what you have in your resources is an image. In the latter case, use standard C# file I/O methods to load the PNG file data, then call Texture2D.LoadImage to convert this into a Texture2D.

Once you have that, you need to get or create a material. A material needs a shader, which you can locate with Shader.Find. Or, if you’re only going to be creating one of these textured planes at a time (or if they all use the same texture), you can just set up a material in your project, and give a reference to that in the script.

Once you have your material reference, you can assign your Texture2D to its mainTexture property, and then assign this material to your plane.

3

Resources.Load expects path relative to any Resources folder under your Assets folder.

Assuming you have your texture under Resources/Textures folder.
i.e, Assets/Resources/Textures/testimage.png

Texture2D  texture = Resources.Load("Textures/testimage") as Texture2D; //No need to specify extension.

If you don’t have texture in Resources folder, you can go for normal File I/O or can download it by using WWW class.

You need a material to set your created texture.

Material material = new Material(Shader.Find("Diffuse"));

Set the texture to this material

material.mainTexture = texture;

Now you have a material ready! Just attach it to the renderer, you are done!

planeGameObject.GetComponent<Renderer>().material = material;
2 Likes
4

Excellent explanation thanks, based on this I managed to get it working with the code below.

Note the you must create a material in the editor and drag it onto the frontPlane property in the inspector window. Alternatively, you must create a new material at run-time and assign it to frontPlane.

public Material frontPlane;

void Start() {

// Create the Plane
GameObject plane = GameObject.CreatePrimitive(PrimitiveType.Plane);

// Load the Image from somewhere on disk
var filePath = "C:/MYDATA/MYIMAGE.png";
if (System.IO.File.Exists(filePath))
{
     // Image file exists - load bytes into texture 
     var bytes = System.IO.File.ReadAllBytes(filePath);
     var tex = new Texture2D(1, 1);
     tex.LoadImage(bytes);
     frontPlane.mainTexture = tex;

     // Apply to Plane
     MeshRenderer mr = plane.GetComponent<MeshRenderer> ();
     mr.material = frontPlane;
}
}
2 Likes
5

Cool! Thank you for following up with your solution, that provides great closure and a handy reference for future googlers who might stumble upon this thread.

One request though: use code tags to make your code more readable. A good way to do that is to click the little “insert” button (between the movie film and the floppy disk) in the editor toolbar.

6

No prioblem. Done. Thanks again