Hey Creators! Importing third-party assets can be a pain when incompatible materials pop up, leaving you with nothing but ugly magenta prefabs - which is why we’re excited to introduce the Material Conversion tool. Designed to easily update those problematic materials to Rec Room-friendly shaders in just a few clicks, the Material Conversion tool is great for everything from quick fixes to customizing every detail.
What Is The Material Conversion Tool?
When you import assets into Rec Room Studio, the materials designed for general Unity use often don’t play well with our shaders, causing visual issues. The Material Conversion tool steps in to automatically suggest compatible shaders, and also gives you the freedom to manually select different shaders and remap textures or colors to meet your creative needs.
How Will This Help?
We’ve heard feedback from creators about the challenges of dealing with incompatible materials, often leading to time-consuming manual fixes. The Material Conversion tool solves this problem by automating a lot of the conversion process, letting you focus on creating and not troubleshooting.
How Does It Work?
The Material Conversion tool is designed to be intuitive and simple to use, just like any other tool in Rec Room Studio. It automatically opens when you import any incompatible materials, so you can start fixing them right away. It will also appear to help you fix incompatible materials when you want to test your subroom or upload it to Rec.net. If you need it later, you can select the option “Rec Room Studio / Material Conversion…” from the main menu—it is always available to convert some materials.
Here's how you can get started
Here’s how you can get started:
- Import your assets: The tool quickly flags incompatible materials so you can fix them right away
- Choose your shader: Select a Rec Room shader like Lit, Foliage, or Water, and adjust texture or color inputs to match your style
- Preview the results: Instantly see side-by-side 3D previews of the original and converted materials to ensure they look perfect
- Finalize: Once satisfied, apply the converted materials and proceed with your project
What’s next?
We’re just getting started! With automated Material Conversion, we aim to boost efficiency and give creators time back to focus on the fun part—creating. Future updates will bring even more shader options and workflow improvements, so stay tuned!
Have feedback? We’d love to hear from you. You can submit your suggestions and ideas directly to this Creator Forum thread to help shape future updates.