Can I disable automatic creation of materials on model import?

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I've posted this on the forum quite a while ago and forgot about it - but as the posting got bumped I thought it's worth a quick q/a over here:

When importing objects, there's materials created automatically which sometimes (e.g. in the case of having lo-poly/hi-poly models) isn't that useful, in particular when you work with modified copies of those models.

So, is it possible - and if so, how - to disable automatic generation of materials?

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Answer by jashan · Nov 28, 2009 at 12:25 PM

RTFM ;-) Well, in the current version of Unity (2.6), you find a DropDown in the FBXImporter-section under "Materials" which says either "Off", or "Per Texture" or "Per Material". So that does the trick. Maybe someone could add if there's a way to make this the default (my guess would be that this is possible with editor scripting but there might be an easier way, too).

In this property inspector, you can also disable importing animations.

EDIT: There's also an example of how to disable this always via editor scripting in the scripting reference: AssetPostprocessor.OnPreprocessModel

In C#, this would look something like:

using UnityEditor;

public class MyMeshPostprocessor : AssetPostprocessor {
    public void OnPreprocessModel() {
        // Disable generation of materials if the file contains
        // the @ sign marking it as an animation.
        if (base.assetPath.Contains("@")) {
            ModelImporter modelImporter = (ModelImporter) base.assetImporter;
            modelImporter.generateMaterials = ModelImporterGenerateMaterials.None;
        }
    }
}

Only problem with this approach: I think it would probably set this to "none" each time the model is reimported which would overwrite manual changes. Anyone has an idea how that could be solved (in an easy manner without having to do our own book-keeping ;-) )?

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Jessy · Nov 28, 2009 at 03:19 PM 1

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That only works after you have imported the model. It's still going to have the materials generated once. I'd like to know if it's possible to disable that behavior.

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=236143#236143

jashan · Nov 29, 2009 at 11:09 AM 0

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I think it should be possible to disable that. The API would be http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/ModelImporter-generateMaterials.html - however, since I haven't done a lot of editor scripting, I'm not sure how to make sure this is set directly on the first import (before actually doing the import); so maybe someone who knows better can chime in. Ah: Should work with: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/AssetPostprocessor.html - there you have OnPreprocessModel and ... haha - the solution is in the example, I'll edit my answer to include this.

Cyclops · May 01, 2010 at 02:35 PM 1

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Man, that's cold, telling this poor guy to RTFM... wait...

Can I disable automatic creation of materials on model import?

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