How can I use the same 3D material, but change the object's color without affecting the rest?

[granite galleon]

I'm very beginner with 3D materials, even in Blender and Unity, and I don't really know how to keep the same material but make the color independent of the material.

For now, my game uses a different material for each object to change their colors, but this increases the draw calls and I want to reduce them.

[placid meteor]

based on my knowlage of 2D
u have to duplicate in order making it unique material
such as:

var new_material my_obj.material.duplicate()
new_material.set("color..",Color.RED)
my_obj.material = new_material

this method works for me on 2D, im sure u can figure out how to use it on ur project as well?
u can do this manipulations on _ready() script whenever ur object ready

[granite galleon]

Thank you, I found this same solution on Internet, but the draw calls increases per object and I don't know how to decrease it.

I think that one thing I can do is use the same materials for all objects that don't change color, and duplicate the ones that do

[placid meteor]

thats pretty much the solution

[granite galleon]

Isn't there another way to do this without increasing draw calls?

Imagine that I'm coding Just Shapes & Beats obstacles, but with 3D objects

Every object of that game has flashes per object, and that can't be possible by having the same material in each object

Let me explain, I'm doing an experiment by combining Just Shapes & Beats level design and Super Hexagon's gameplay. Everything is made with 3D objects and each object needs to have their own colors

[desert heron]

do you want it through code ?

I use this:

[granite galleon]

Where is it and what it does?

[desert heron]

if you set it to true, Godot will interact with it as a separate material

[boreal briar]

another option is via mateirial overlay in the Meshinstance

Make a material for each color:

• make it have transparency enabled
• Change blend mode to taste
• Make sure to set render priority to 1 higher than the base material
  Interchange those color matarials with a script that changes the material overlay at runtime

[granite galleon]

What I did here is a code that duplicates the material override and changes the color, but it increases the draw calls (I need each radial part to have independent colors)

for (int i = 0; i < radialParts.Length; i++) {
    MeshInstance3D mesh = radialParts[i];
    StandardMaterial3D material = (StandardMaterial3D)mesh.MaterialOverride.Duplicate();

    material.AlbedoColor = Color.FromHsv(0, 0, i % 2 == 0 ? 0.5f : 0.75f);

    mesh.MaterialOverride = material;
}

[granite galleon]

I enabled it, but it changes the color for every object that has this material too

[desert heron]

how do you change the color?

[granite galleon]

I duplicate the material and change the albedo color

[granite galleon]

Oohh

[desert heron]

for two objects ?

[granite galleon]

For 8 objects for now with this code

[desert heron]

oh wait let me see

[granite galleon]

I was thinking on doing something similar

I'll explain what I thought to do with this pseudocode:

if (color is different) {
  Duplicate the material and change the color
} else {
  Assign the same material as every other object
}

And that with each obstacle, but I don't know if this is a good practice or if there are better ways to do this

[drifting ivy]

It sounds like you want per-instance uniforms: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/shaders/shader_reference/shading_language.html#per-instance-uniforms