Why do imported objects not accept materials properly?

Questions & Answers
1

This is probably so easy. I’ve searched and read all the posts I could find about importing. I see all the responses about how importing objects in this format or that format is no problem. Importing itself works reasonably well. I’ve read the docs. Tested and tested. But there’s probably a setting I’m missing somewhere and I think it’s in Unity.

Bottom line up top:

I import an object, apply a material with details in it and the result is a solid color.

The color seems to derive from the material. For instance, forest floor from the terrain assets turns it green. No details, Just the green.

Happens in all formats available to me from two different 3D editors, Blender and Hexagon: .FBX, .3DS, .OBJ and .blender

Tiling and/or has scaling no effect on the material.

The reason I’m pretty sure it’s Unity is that this happens with self-created models from both the above programs and with models I’ve downloaded in those formats from 3rd party sources.

And yet…and yet the same material looks fine in a Unity-native object. The cylinder with the forest floor looks like it should. Tiling works fine.

A check box somewhere?

Thanks in advance.

2

This sounds like a UV coordinate problem. Do these models you have come with specific materials/textures? Drop one of the proper materials on the corresponding model. If it was unwrapped correctly the material will look like it should. If the model was never unwrapped, then it will occupy random areas of the uv coordinates and thus you will get stretching, solid colors, and overall bad results.

If you want to make your own materials for your objects, you should import the object into a 3d program first and unwrap the model. Then render the uvw map and bring that into a program like photoshop to create the texture. If the object has a texture for it, you can reference that when making a new one instead of unwrapping, this way you wont ruin the uvw coordinates that have already been setup by the modeler.