SurfaceSmith

Give large models crisp, high-resolution PBR detail with tileable surfaces and RGBA masks. Edit live or bake for Built-in, URP, and HDRP.

FEATURES

• Create reusable, layered PBR materials directly inside Unity
• Use one unmasked PBR base surface with up to 20 ordered masked layers
• Assign up to five RGBA mask textures, providing 20 independently assignable mask channels
• Supports Base Color, Normal, Metallic, Roughness, Smoothness, and Emission inputs
• Reads metallic and roughness data from ORM and RMA packed textures
• Supports Unity Mask Map and Unity Metallic-Smoothness packed layouts
• Choose between Smoothness, Inverted Roughness, Blend, Multiply, Minimum, and Maximum smoothness modes
• Control layer placement through the Red, Green, Blue, or Alpha channel of a model-specific mask
• UV and World Triplanar surface mapping
• Per-surface tint, brightness, tiling, offset, rotation, normal strength, metallic, smoothness, and emission controls
• Per-layer mask inversion, influence, falloff, black point, white point, contrast, and edge-softness controls
• Optional per-layer overrides for tint, mapping, PBR properties, and emission
• Drag and reorder layers to control which surface takes priority where masks overlap
• Preview and edit layered materials directly on selected Scene objects
• Automatic live-material updates with a manual Update Live Material option
• Save non-destructive recipes for later editing and rebaking
• Live layered materials are supported in player builds
• Alpha-clipped materials with Base Color alpha or a dedicated opacity mask
• Bake using UV0 or UV1
• Preset bake resolutions from 512 to 8192, with custom resolutions from 64 to 8192 per dimension
• Configurable UV-island padding from 0 to 64 pixels
• Bake Base Color, Normal, Metallic, Roughness, Smoothness, Metallic-Smoothness, Emission, and Opacity maps
• PNG, TGA, and EXR texture export
• Generate SurfaceSmith Baked materials or native Standard, URP Lit, and HDRP Lit materials
• Update existing baked assets in place to preserve references, or save a separate bake as new
• Share tileable Surface Definitions across multiple objects to reduce source-texture duplication
• Automatic 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20-layer live-shader tier selection
• Optimized material updates and selective recompilation help maintain a responsive editor workflow

COMPATIBILITY AND REQUIREMENTS

• Unity 6 LTS
• Built-in Render Pipeline
• Universal Render Pipeline 17
• High Definition Render Pipeline 17
• Render pipeline is detected automatically
• Surface Definitions and recipes remain portable between supported pipelines
• Opaque and alpha-clipped materials
• Transparent surface blending is not supported
• Designed for static MeshRenderer props, architecture, and environment objects
• Terrain is not supported
• Each Renderer material slot uses a separate recipe and baked texture set
• Baking requires suitable UVs on UV0 or UV1
• Automatic UV unwrapping and repair of overlapping UV islands are not included
• High live-layer counts and World Triplanar mapping increase shader cost and should be profiled, especially on mobile or lower-end hardware
• Baked native Lit materials are recommended for dense scenes and predictable runtime performance

***SUPPORTED EDITOR OS***

- **Windows 10**

- **Windows 11**

DOCUMENTATION

• [Insert public documentation URL]

Large objects often force a compromise between soft surface detail and enormous baked texture sets. SurfaceSmith gives you another option.

Use the PBR materials you already own to create rich, reusable layered surfaces directly inside Unity. Combine materials such as paint, metal, rust, dirt, plaster, stone, wood, or wear, then use model-specific RGBA masks to control exactly where each surface appears.

Because SurfaceSmith layers tileable PBR materials across your model, fine surface detail remains sharp—even on large props, machinery, vehicles, architecture, and environment assets where a single traditionally baked 4K texture can quickly lose clarity.

Work non-destructively and preview changes directly on selected Scene objects. Adjust tiling, UV or World Triplanar mapping, layer order, mask falloff, tint, normal strength, metallic, smoothness, emission, and more.

Keep the result as a live, editable layered material, or bake production-ready textures and materials for Unity’s Built-in Render Pipeline, Universal Render Pipeline, or High Definition Render Pipeline.

Reusable Surface Definitions can be shared across multiple objects. Instead of creating a separate high-resolution texture set for every asset, the same tileable surfaces can be combined with different masks and recipes. This can reduce texture duplication, project size, build size, and texture memory.

Key features:

• Create layered materials from your existing PBR texture sets
• Use one complete PBR base surface with up to 20 ordered masked layers
• Control surface placement with model-specific RGBA masks
• Maintain crisp, high-resolution detail through material tiling
• Use UV or World Triplanar mapping
• Preview and refine materials directly inside Unity
• Keep materials live and editable or bake production-ready assets
• Generate materials for Built-in, URP, and HDRP
• Reuse Surface Definitions across multiple models
• Save non-destructive recipes for easy editing and rebaking

SurfaceSmith is designed for Unity 6 and automatically detects the active Built-in, URP, or HDRP render pipeline.