ArtEngine to Unity workflow using Unity Direct Link

Owned by Alice Hinton-Jones (Deactivated)
Last updated: Sept 03, 2021
2 min read

A demonstration of the Unity Direct Link workflow from our artists.

Unity Direct Link provides a round-trip workflow between ArtEngine and Unity. It exports materials specifically for Unity and its render pipelines. When you modify the material in ArtEngine and re-execute Unity Direct Link, the changes appear immediately in the Unity project.

Unity Direct Link creates a Unity Material (.mat) file in your Unity project, and assigns material maps to your chosen render pipeline’s shader.

You can access the direct link functionality via the Output node in ArtEngine. When you connect a material to the Output node, a Unity Shaders tab appears in the node properties. Here, you can select Unity Direct Link as the export type, as well as the target Unity shader.

To export a material with Unity Direct Link:

  1. Create an Output node in the ArtEngine Node Graph.
  2. Connect a material-type node to the Output node.
  3. In the Properties window of the Output node, set the Output Path to the location within your Unity project you want to export the material to.
  4. Expand the Unity Shaders tab, and select Unity Direct Link as the export type.
  5. Choose the target shader type (and sub-type, where appropriate) you want to export the material for. The shaders correspond directly to the ones in Unity and its render pipelines.
  6. Check the texture map list in the Unity Shaders tab to see which of the maps that the shader accepts are present in your material.
  7. Execute the Output node chain.

After the execution completes, you can find the material in your Unity Project.

If you subsequently make changes to the material and re-execute the Output node chain, the Unity Material updates accordingly.