Using MaterialPropertyBlock with tiles

Question

I would like to make it so if the cursor enter a tile, it becomes "higlighted" (slightly whitened), like the left tile below.

I'm quite new to Unity, and after reading an article from Thomas Mountainborn (http://thomasmountainborn.com/2016/05/25/materialpropertyblocks/) I managed to do this with a simple shader on an Object, and changing a parameter in a MaterialPropertyBlock when the mouse enter or quit its collider.

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class Highlight: MonoBehaviour
{
    [SerializeField]
    private float baseHighlightFactor;

    private Renderer _renderer;
    private MaterialPropertyBlock _propBlock;
    private float _highlight;

    void Awake()
    {
        _propBlock = new MaterialPropertyBlock();
        _renderer = GetComponent<Renderer>();
        _highlight = 0;
    }

    private void Update()
    {
        // Get the current value of the material properties in the renderer.
        _renderer.GetPropertyBlock(_propBlock);
        // Assign our new value.
        _propBlock.SetFloat("_hooverFactor", _highlight);
        // Apply the edited values to the renderer.
        _renderer.SetPropertyBlock(_propBlock);
    }

    private void OnMouseEnter()
    {
        _highlight = baseHighlightFactor;
    }

    private void OnMouseExit()
    {
        _highlight = 0;
    }
}

I wondered if I could do the same with tiles, but with scriptable tiles I can't seem to do it, since the Renderer is a component of the Tilemap and not the Tile itself.

Am I going the wrong direction? I would not like to duplicate each sprite (highlighted/not highlighted) since I have a lot of them. I guess I could use Objects instead of Tiles, but Tilemap properties could be useful for other parts of my project.

It sounds like what you really want to ask is "how to highlight a tile in a TileMap". Using MaterialPropertyBlock was a guess at an answer, and one that - as you've found - does not work, so ask about the root problem you want to solve, not the guessed-at solution. — DMGregory
– DMGregory ♦, Commented May 8, 2022 at 19:22

Mangata · Accepted Answer · 2022-05-09 16:22:03Z

Although tilemap is a whole, it can get the corresponding sprite through the mapping of world coordinates and grid coordinates.

Code:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.Tilemaps;

public class NewBehaviourScript : MonoBehaviour
{
    public GridLayout gridLayout;
    public Tilemap tilemap;
    private Vector3Int pLast;
    void Start()
    {
    }
    void Update()
    {
        Ray ray = Camera.main.ScreenPointToRay(Input.mousePosition);
        RaycastHit2D hit = Physics2D.Raycast(ray.origin, ray.direction);
        if (hit.collider != null)
        {
            Vector3Int p = gridLayout.WorldToCell(hit.point);
            if (p == pLast)
            {
                return;
            }
            if (tilemap.HasTile(p))
            {
                tilemap.SetTileFlags(p, TileFlags.None);
                tilemap.SetColor(p, Color.green);
                if (tilemap.HasTile(pLast))
                {
                    tilemap.SetColor(pLast, Color.white);
                }
                pLast = p;
            }
        }
    }
}

As for MaterialPropertyBlock, Basically it's a performance optimized way. It saves memory by having multiple spriteRenderers share a common material instance. In tilemap, This is already handled internally, you don't need to worry about it.

Stack Exchange Network

Using MaterialPropertyBlock with tiles

1 Answer 1

You must log in to answer this question.

Hot Network Questions

Using MaterialPropertyBlock with tiles

1 Answer 1

You must log in to answer this question.

Related

Hot Network Questions