why are not objects (materials) by reference in unity?

Question

Hi. In c# all objects of the classes are the reference. In other words if you assign ClassA class2=new ClassA(); ClassA class1=classa2; class1.a=10; then if you change class1 you see class2 changes too but in unity if you change a material object (mat2) you see the other material (mat1) will not change!! Renderer renderer=GetComponent(); Material mat1=renderer.material; Material mat2=mat1;

Answer 1

Answer by NoseKills · Jul 01, 2016 at 06:13 AM

Materials like all classes are reference types so they are passed by reference. You can easily test this with the example you provided yourself.

 Material materialA = new Material(Shader.Find("Standard"));
 Material materialB = materialA;
 materialA.color = Color.red;
 
 Debug.Log(materialA.color);
 Debug.Log(materialB.color);

Renderer.material however is a property that clones the material if it's used in multiple places ( as mentioned in the API docs)

Use Renderer.sharedMaterial if you don't want a clone

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why are not objects (materials) by reference in unity?

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