Workshop: Custom Materials

In this guide, I will try to teach you how to make Custom Materials for the Unturned Editor.

Getting Started

As of 13/05/2022 Legacy Materials are no longer supported in Unturned. Devkit Materials are now the only material type.

This guide is assuming you already know how to make custom materials for the (now deprecated) Legacy Editor, in case you don't, I have my guide for it linked. Legacy Material Guide

Bundling

Unlike legacy materials, you must bundle these with the Masterbundler tool. In previous versions of the game, you could use the Content Tool. In recent days the Content Tool has been depreciated. If you don't know how to masterbundle, I made a guide.

Map Files

Now, head into the "Bundles" folder, create a folder called Assets. Inside the Assets folder, create another folder, you can call it whatever you want, but I recommend "Materials". In that folder you need to create some ".asset" files, name it something like, "MyMap_Grass0_Material.asset". If you can't make one on your own, just copy one from "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Unturned\Bundles\Assets\Landscapes\Materials\Russia"

As this is a Masterbundle, you must mirror the file structure in Unity.

.Asset

Now that you have the .asset files created, copy and paste the following into it.

"Metadata"
{
	"GUID" "383b9e52e1064c188ded12a0fe58c465"
	"Type" "SDG.Unturned.LandscapeMaterialAsset, Assembly-CSharp, Version=0.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null"
}
"Asset"
{
	"ID" "0"
	"Texture"
	{
		"Name" "mymap.masterbundle"
		"Path" "assets/final/materials/materials/Grass.png"
	}
	"Mask"
	{
		"Name" ""
		"Path" ""
	}
	"Physics_Material" "FOLIAGE_STATIC"
	"Foliage"
	{
		"GUID" "69124c86539c4b27b0a3e74541537308"
	}
}

For reference, the "Physics_Material" dictates the Particles and Sounds the material makes, you have several different options for these, "FOLIAGE_STATIC", "GRAVEL_STATIC", and "CONCRETE_STATIC" and "SNOW_STATIC"
"Name" (Under "Texture") dictates what .content file the .asset takes from
"Path" (Under "Texture") is the directory of the Materials in your Unity project.

Give the file some unique GUID's, you can generate some off of GUIDgenerator[guidgenerator.com], Generate them without hyphens and then replace the existing GUID's with the newly generated one.
Now, save and load up Unturned, if you did everything right, you should now have some custom Devkit Materials.

Thanks

Hopefully, everything should be working now. I would say "if you have any issues, ask me", but I'm not too active in the community anymore these days. I would recommend you direct your attention to Unturned Official's modding support channels on Discord.

[Curlyfries]

thank you :)

[Spebby]

you can open them with any text editor. if you're on windows, right click, open with, and choose another app if your chosen text editor isnt in the list. you can actually open any file with any program, whether or not you'll get useful results depends on what you're trying to open. You can open pngs with this method, though you won't see anything but nonsense.

[Curlyfries]

how do i open a .asset file? I cant open them with any text editor, and if i import them into unity they aren't able to be loaded because they're empty and/or corrupted. If it's because i need to make them INSIDE unity then I can't find where to do that. :/

[Spebby]

You must also setup the masterbundle properly, please refer to that guide if you're unsure of how to do so.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1581272357

[Spebby]

If you're doing the materials the same way as Legacy materials that will no longer work. You must set them up according to the guide, I don't believe anything has changed as materials on my current project still work and are setup in accordance to when this guide was written.

[ajsbeast]

For more information, Unturned has updated the map materials to now use the new landscape tiles, and as a result they need to use texture masterbundles rather than the old asset bundles. The guide above should help with setting this up, but your old legacy map materials will no longer work until updated.

[ajsbeast]

Hey not the post author but I've managed to get materials working with the new system.

Firstly you'll need to put your texture assets into unity and then export them as a masterbundle. Once that's done you can follow this guide for getting them in game. Make sure the masterbundle referenced is the exact same name as the one in Unity or the textures won't show up.

[Magnus Magister ONCS]

I'm sorry to disturb you, but two days ago there was an update on how the materials work. As with legacy materials I used to do well, now after 5 times nothing is successful, the game can see the materials but I cannot use them (in my case). I don't know if it's my fault or the update. If something changed with the Unturned code, maybe you could make a simple step-by-step instructional video? Have a nice day!

[纳卡希泽亲王]

If you don't mind, I'll organize your tutorial into a Chinese version.

[Spebby]

this guide might be outdated, I can look into it