Why does the inspector view sometimes not include a material slot??

I don’t understand why I’m seeing an assets material slot show up in the Inspector sometimes and other times not?

If I highlight an assets ‘blue box with a white paper’ icon in the Project view it’s details show up in the inspector, along with a 3d representation of it. Sometimes this shows up as pink and I notice that in the inspector it has no material slot… huh? I don’t get it? In the create panel the same asset will have the material fine?

Am I doing something wrong?

any advice greatly appreciated.

To put this another way, how do I add a material to a asset when it’s not placed in the scene yet? The only way I know how to addd a material currently is to drag its texture on to the assets name in the hierarchy, ie when the asset is already in the scene…

I also have this problem sometimes. When added to the scene a mesh imported from blender will not have the “Mesh Renderer” or any way to select materials. Dragging and dropping a material on the object works, but its not reflected in the inspector.

Chris