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Unity Asset Shader FlatKit Manual

This document provides an overview and instructions for using the Flat Kit asset package in Unity. It describes the included shaders such as the Stylized Surface shader, and image effects like fog and outlines. It explains how to import and get started with Flat Kit, the parameters of the main Stylized Surface shader, and additional scripts and presets included in Flat Kit. Sections include quick start instructions, descriptions of each shader and their parameters, how to use included image effects and scripts, and an overview of included scenes and presets.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
888 views17 pages

Unity Asset Shader FlatKit Manual

This document provides an overview and instructions for using the Flat Kit asset package in Unity. It describes the included shaders such as the Stylized Surface shader, and image effects like fog and outlines. It explains how to import and get started with Flat Kit, the parameters of the main Stylized Surface shader, and additional scripts and presets included in Flat Kit. Sections include quick start instructions, descriptions of each shader and their parameters, how to use included image effects and scripts, and an overview of included scenes and presets.

Uploaded by

Jane
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 17

Online version of the Manual —

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GQbTaZQmdmliz31bKxJDDSlhAz0vKgHQ3mxDfCV-iOw

Contents
Contents 1

1. Quick Overview 2

2. Quick start. Beginning to work with Flat Kit 3

3. Shaders. In-Depth Overview 3


3.1. ‘Stylized Surface’ Shader 4
3.1.1. The Main Parameters of the Shader 5
3.1.2. The Additional Parameters of the Shader 8
3.2. ‘Stylized Surface Cutout’ Shader 9
3.3. ‘Stylized Surface with Outline’ Shader 9
3.4. ‘Gradient Skybox’ Shader 10
3.5. ‘Terrain’ Shader 11
3.6. ‘LightPlane’ Shader 12

4. Camera Image Effects 13


4.1. Fog Image Effect 13
4.2. Outline Image Effect 14

5. Additional scripts 15
5.1. UV Scroller 15
5.2. Constant Motion 15

6. Scenes 16

7. Presets 16
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 2

1. Quick Overview
Thank you for purchasing the Flat Kit. We hope it will bring you some serious streams of inspiration
and suit your wide variety of design needs.
We’ve spent hundreds of hours to research, design and implement the right set of assets needed to
achieve a slick minimalist look. We hope it works for your project out of the box. If you have questions after
reading this guide, let us know at ​hi @ dustyroom.com​.
To name Flat Kit a set of flat shaders, cel shaders or toon ones, would be a serious underestimation.
Yes, these all can be easily done. As well as countless other (maybe unseen before) styles. It can be sharp
flat, it can have one, two, nine steps of hard shadow, or soft-shaded, or gradient-shaded — with pale or acid
colors, it can have three gradiental effects (when you start thinking out of the box, the parameter like
‘Specular’, usual for, well, a specularity or a glare, here can act as your fourth shadow, or a gradient etc).
In case you already use any other flat-looking shaders, you will still find a variety of useful tools for
quick image processing. Particularly, later in the manual we’ll overview the ​Height Gradient mode​ of the
Stylized Surface Shader,​ the ​Fog Image Effect​ camera component, ​LightPlane​ shader effect etc. They have
quite little related to toon or cell shading, but in conjunction with a stylish flat or cel look, they add a whole new
life to your scene. Plus, they can be used out of context of non-photorealistic aesthetics. It is a spice that can
dramatically make your dish sweeter (more tasty).
Flat Kit was made with optimized and fast workflow in mind, so that one could fulfill the picture popped
up in the mind — as quick as possible, in various ways. This means:
● One task could be done in different ways. It is a multi-purpose set of shaders;
● Some outstanding graphical results can be achieved in minutes (given that you have your
models ready, there are lots in FlatKit);
● There is always an element of you-didn’t-think-it-can-be-done-this-way surprise thanks to
FlatKit deep yet streamlined interface.
For example, let’s take fog. Fog is usually a big part of any 3D environment, isn’t it? There are lots of
methods to implement fog into the scene, often complex and complicated. With Flat Kit, we decided to make it
as convenient as possible for the user end. So, the fog can be done in two ways.
● Using ​Fog Image Effect​ post-effect / camera component
● Using ​LightPlane​ shader
We are going to explain how these work and what are they down in the manual. Both ways
suit different needs, but they really do compliment each other.
Another example of multi-purpose nature of our shaders is cel shading itself. Now, it’s going to
take a whole chapter of this manual to elaborate on cel shading. For now it’s only worth mentioning that same
or similar results can be made using different parameters of the shader’s interface.
It’s important, because apart from the expected ‘Cel Shade parameter’, Flat Kit also has a bunch of
additional settings to explore. Each additional parameter of the shader adds an extra dimension of
possibilities. It’s like having purple color paint, then you have red, and blue, and yellow. Purple is cool by itself
and you already have it, but you can make it up by mixing blue and red. Or you can spare blue to match with
yellow — to get green. In any case you get your purple, and also, simultaneously — other combinations, often
surprising and inspiring. We’ll talk about the importance of such a potential later in the manual.
One of the big advantages of using these shaders is the fact that you don’t have to guess how the
colors will look on your scene. If you want precision and accuracy — you have it. Moreover, if you want
something unpredictable and you are trying to make your scene look different to spark your inspiration and
imagination, but not sure how, you can do this too! Remember, this is a ​set​ of shaders selected to complement
each other.
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 3

Flat Kit structural view

2. Quick start. Beginning to work with Flat Kit


Flat Kit is fully self-contained and does not depend on any external assets.
If you do not need demo scenes, example materials and models you may skip importing the Demos
directory in the asset.
The easiest way to get started with the asset is to dig into the demo scenes.
It may take a while for Unity to import the asset — this is normal. Under the hood, Unity needs to
generate all shader variants that are used in the demo scenes.
On 3D models side, it’s important that you make normals ‘smooth’ for your meshes. If you import
someone’s else models and can’t edit the object in 3D editor, at least try to calculate normals in Unity — in the
import settings of the model. It should work anyway, but sometimes the difference can be obvious, especially
on objects with rounded corners.

3. Shaders. In-Depth Overview


When you create a material, you’ll choose a shader. By default, Unity has the standard shader picked
up. Once installed, all Flat Kit material shaders are located under Flat Kit sub-menu of the Shader drop-down
menu. Please choose the one that would work for your current task. Below is the description of all the shaders.
All object shaders in Flat Kit require Unity’s ​Standard Rendering Pipeline​. If your project requires a
Scriptable Rendering Pipeline (​LWSRP​ and ​HDSRP​), please drop us a line at ​hi @ dustyroom.com​.
Our shaders expose shading properties as material features. If a feature toggle is not activated on any
materials in the build scenes, the portion of shader code for that feature is not included in the build.
At the moment, there are the following shaders included into Flat Kit: ​Stylized Surface​, ​Stylized
Surface Cutout,​ ​Stylized Surface with Outline​, ​Gradient Skybox​, ​Terrain​, L
​ ightPlane​.
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 4

Collection of shaders in Flat Kit. From a Shader drop-down, hover the FlatKit sub-menu and choose a
shader

3.1. ‘Stylized Surface’ Shader


This is a versatile sheder to be used on rigid object materials. To use it on a material select the shader
“FlatKit/Stylized Surface” or “FlatKit/Stylized Surface Cutout”. This is your main go-to shader. It works for the
vast majority of cases.
Stylized Surface​ shader consists of the following ​main​ building blocks:
- Color,
- Cel Shading mode (None, Single [Cel], Steps, Gradient),
- Extra Cel layer,
- Specular,
- Rim,
- Height Gradient.

The ​additional​ parameters are:


- Advanced Lighting,
- Unity Built-in Shadows,
- Texture.
Note:​ Each combination of the features above, used in your project results in generating a ​shader
variant​ during the build process. To limit the build time and the resulting binary size be careful not to add
unuseful feature combinations. On the other hand, this mechanism makes sure that only the used features are
included in the build. More information on shader variants:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-MultipleProgramVariants.html
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 5

‘Stylized Surface’ shader in Single mode. Simple use case on the left, more options engaged on the
right

3.1.1. The Main Parameters of the Shader

Color.​ This would be the color of your mesh (applicable to most cases, though you can make shader’s
other parameters override or mask this main color, if you wish so).
Cel Shading Mode.​ This is where you choose the style (mode) of your shading, the color of the
shading, and other respective parameters of the modes. Depending on the mode you choose the parameters
will look differently. So, let’s talk modes.
- None.​ Use this to achieve simple flat look or to get any other creative picture not involving cel
shading, however, the following parameters of Stylized Surface shader will still let you do this,
if you choose so.
Note, the flatness and actual representation of colors on the scene depend on the lighting of
the scene. In our demos we use Skybox as the source of lighting. Conveniently, there is a
Dependency slider on the Lighting panel of Unity, which tells how much of the influence the
Skybox provides. On minimum, there won’t be any shadows, as well as the colors will be
identical to those you would choose in ​Color​ block of the shader. On maximum, the Skybox
heavily dictates what the colors will look like. For more natural (not necessarily realistic — but
natural, ​organic​ look of the scene, it’s healthy to let Skybox influence the coloring of the
scene).
- Single.​ ​This mode provides you with one shadow of chosen ​Color​. ​Self Shading Size​ is the
size of the cel. Larger values mean larger size of the shadow. ​Shadow Edge Size​ controls
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 6

sharpness of the cel. The lower the value — the sharper the cel. The higher the value — the
more blurry is the shadow. ​Localized Shading​ is basically how condensed the shadow is.
Higher values represent sharper cel.
- Steps.​ Basically, you choose the shading color and number of steps to blend from main Color
into the color you pick up in Steps mode.
- Curve.​ The gradient, interpolated transition from one color to another.
In order to get ​Steps ​and ​Curve​ modes to work — as soon as you have number of steps (​Steps​ mode)
or curve shape (​Curve​ mode) chosen — the shader will ask you to save its utility ramp texture somewhere on
the disk. It will write the transition onto it. The texture will appear red in the editor. This is because internally we
use the R8 texture format for efficiency.

Steps (on the left) and Curve (on the right) Shading Modes of Stylized Surface shader. Inspector
interface

Extra Cel Layer.​ This is like another instance of ​Single​ Cel Shading mode. Works independently from
the main ​Cel Shading Mode​. It means, you can make main Cel shading as ​None​ (flat), and add an ​Extra Cel
Layer​. The result will be the same as if you would have used the ​Single​ mode. Or, make main Cel layer and
Extra Cel Layer almost identical, giving an Extra Layer a darker color, and making it smaller. This would result
in stepping, similar to ​Steps​ mode with 1 step.

Specular.​ You can make a, well, specular with this parameter. Also it can be used as another layer of
shadow.

Specular. Inspector interface


Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 7

Specular Color​ picks up the color of your glare, the parameter works in HDR. ​Specular Size
determines how big the specular is. Higher values mean bigger specular. ​Specular Edge Smoothness​ —
moving slider to the left decreases blurriness and makes specular sharper.

Rim. ​Rim was designed as a way to make outlines.

Rim. Inspector interface

You can think of Rim as some kind of inner shadow and/or as inner glow. In one of the ​Fruit Vase
demo scene, there is an example of extensive use of Rim as outline. On ​Blueprint Grid​ demo scene Rim is
used as smooth inner glow. This parameter can be used creatively, for example, to substitute Curve mode or
Extra Cel parameter. Just reminding you that the name of any parameter should not be perceived literally,
most of them have many use cases. On the screenshot below with help of Suzanne the Blender Monkey we
tried to show a few instances of Stylized Surface​ ​shader with ​None​ mode selected (meaning no
straightforward shadows are applied), using orange color, and only Rim parameter enabled. The results are
variations of Rim section only. Imagine to add some creative Specular and Height Gradient…

Variety of uses of Rim parameter alone on Suzanne the Blender Monkey. Interface of Stylized Surface
shader with ‘None’ cel shading mode

Rim Color​ selects the color of the parameter. It works in HDR. ​Light Align​ parameter rotates the rim.
Rim Size​ controls how big the Rim is. Very high values can serve you as an unlit effect. ​Rim Edge
Smoothness​ — moving slider to the left sharpens the Rim, to the right — makes Rim blurry.
Although ​Rim​ option is creatively useful, there are two more obvious ways to add an outline using Flat
Kit: to use ​‘Stylized Surface with Outline’ shader​ and/or to use ​‘Outline Image Effect’ camera
component​.We’ll talk about them both later in this manual.

TIP.​ Animate Cel layer size, Specular size or Rim size — to get a neat transition effect.

Height Gradient.​ This effect overlays a gradient from opaque selected color to transparent color onto
everything you’ve set before. Height Gradient is absolute, it depends on the position of the object on the
scene. If you would like to make a relative height gradient, duplicate a material and adjust the height gradient.
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 8

Height Gradient. Inspector interface

Gradient Color​ picks the parameter’s own color to fade into from transparency. ​Center X​ and ​Y​ are
initial points from where the effect takes effect. Adjust these to move the gradient across the scene. ​Center X
is useful if you engaged ​Gradient Angle​, which means the rotation of the Gradient. ​Size​ determines how steep
the transition of Gradient is. The further the value is from 0 (zero) — the more gradual the effect is. Negative
values flip the Gradient.
More about the nature and use of ​Height Gradient​ is covered in ‘​Terrain’ Shader​ section of this
manual (chapter. 3.4).

3.1.2. The Additional Parameters of the Shader


Advanced Lighting (Light Contribution).​ Light Contribution defines how much the lights of the
scene impact the color of the object. The value of 0.0 results in completely ignoring scene lights, the value of
1.0 results in full multiplication between scene light color and the object color.

Unity Built-in Shadows.​ If the object has ‘Receive Shadows’ option turned on in Mesh Renderer, you
have an ability to use Unity-processed shadows, as you would do in Unity Standard Material shader, with a
few extra-options.

Unity Built-in Shadows mode menu. Inspector interface

First, you have to select what mode to work with.


None​ mode turns the Built-in shadow parameter off.
Multiply​ mode lets you cast she shadows as in default material. You don’t have direct control over the
color. You can change intensity and sharpness.
Color​ mode lets you choose the color of the casted shadow.

Height Gradient in Color mode. Inspector interface

Texture.​ If you’ve got a UV-unwrapped mesh, you can add a texture to it. If you work with
transparency in textures, please use ​Stylized Shader Cutout​ shader. It can see alpha on the texture as
transparency.
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 9

3.2. ‘Stylized Surface Cutout’ Shader


This is a version of Stylized Surface shader with an option to treat alpha as transparency on a texture.
The rest of the shader is the same.
The ​Base Alpha cutout​ parameter determines how much of alpha portion of the texture is going to be
transparent.

‘Stylized Surface Cutout’ shader — Valley demo scene, trees branches material. Inspector interface

3.3. ‘Stylized Surface with Outline’ Shader


‘Stylized Surface with Outline’ shader,​ being the same as the regular ​‘Stylized Surface’ shader​ in a
nutshell, has an additional option of… outlines.
Outline Color​ picks up the color of an outline. ​Outline Width​ determines how thick the outline is.
Outline Depth Offset​ moves the outline inwards or outwards an object.
Please note that the width is absolute to the scene, meaning, it won’t scale depending on the distance
from an object to the camera. Objects closer to the camera will have an outline of the same width as the more
distant ones, of course, if they share the same material.
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 10

‘Stylized Surface with Outline’ shader

3.4. ‘Gradient Skybox’ Shader


This is a simple method to fill the sky of your scene.
Top Color​ and ​Bottom Color​ define two colors to be blended. ​Intensity​ is a darkness/brightness
controller. ​Exponent​ accentuates the effect in favour of either ​Top Color​ or ​Bottom Color.​ ​Direction X angle
and ​Direction Y angle​ rotate the effect along corresponding axis.
Make ​Top Color​ and ​Bottom Color​ identical colors or move ​Exponent​ parameter to one of the
extremes if you want a flat background.
Intensity​ is brightness of the skybox.
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 11

Gradient Skybox. Inspector panel interface.

3.5. ‘Terrain’ Shader


Terrains are great in Unity. But it’s not so trivial to work with terrain materials, that is why we added a
separate shader that deals with Unity Terrain system.
If you are not familiar with Unity Terrains, please refer to their documentation. In two words, terrain
uses Terrain Layers, something like containers of all textures — diffuse, normal, bump etc. FlatKit Terrain
shader sees those textures and applies own colors onto the layers. Since we are talking about flat look, no
normal or bump maps are required. In order to have a full control over colors of the terrain, you can load a
plain white texture as your terrain layer (on ​Valley demo scene​ we did so). All the colors will be available from
the shader interface, they will be multiplied with your white texture, resulting in pure color you choose. If you
are already familiar with Stylized Surface shader, Terrain shader interface won’t be news to you.

This is an appropriate time to talk about Height Gradient parameter FlatKit offers. You can use it as a
part of Stylized Surface, Stylized Surface Cutout and Terrain shaders. Height Gradient works wonders on
terrain in context of flat shading.
Usually flat shaded landscape objects lack organic embellishment the real world has. All
extra-shadows, small scale details, big and tiny grunge spots etc make the picture nonlinear to our eyes, thus,
interesting, engaging. With flat aesthetics — there is a color, there may be a shadow or shadows, maybe a few
models for the more natural look. The result — quite boring scene. If you want more polished look, you’ll want
to fight linearity, with Height Gradient coming handy. It stretches the interpolation between transparency and
its own color along vertical axis (by default) and multiplies the gradient over the colors you already have. You
can rotate the direction, so that it is no longer vertical but diagonal, horizontal and all in-between.
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 12

This effect changes the scene dramatically. Now, the terrain has its shadow work you set on the
interface, and on top of that there is a gradient, subtle or obvious. Immediately, it adds depth and more
professional look to the scene.
If you work on some kind of an environmental landscape object but do not use Unity Terrain, please
use Stylized Surface shader. Height Gradient is available there too.

Height Gradient on Unity Terrain (without on upper image, with — on lower one). Valley Demo Scene

3.6. ‘LightPlane’ Shader


This shader is what we are particularly proud of. It looks like a small tool. But it has unmeasurable
possibilities. Fog, mist, delicate scene boundaries, light beams, glow of magic swords, laser beams. These
things are what LightPlane is for.
Wanderer scene includes LightPlane shader implemented not only as fog areas, but also as light
beams of so-called pick-up objects and even as planets. One of the Valley scenes has got LightPlane shader
as floating air particles thanks to Unity particle system.
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 13

LightPlane Shader. Inspector panel interface

4. Camera Image Effects


Both Fog and Outline image effects rely on image-based anti-aliasing, like the one in Unity's
Post-processing stack.

4.1. Fog Image Effect

Fog Image Effect camera component can be reviewed as a post-processing effect. It can be subtle,
like a mist in the lower part of the valley, or a dominant effect, as in completely hazed environment. Simply put,
it works in the following way. You decide whether you need only length fog or height fog or both. Then you
determine the bounds where it would take an effect. Then you choose colors along each dimension. And after
that, blend between distance and height. This effect starts from camera position up to the Near/Far, Low/High
bounds, meaning, your camera is the zero coordinate from where the fog spreads. Each camera on the scene
can have a separate independent instance of an effect.

Because Unity’s MSAA (multi-sample anti-aliasing, which is an option in the Quality Settings of your
project) does not apply to depth texture, there may be inconsistencies between the anti-aliased color image
and the unprocessed depth image. This may look as aliasing if fog intensity is set to a high value. ​Such
artifacts may only occur if using MSAA​, so we recommend using screen-space anti-aliasing, such as in
Unity’s post-processing stack that you can import by going to Window - Package Manager in Unity 2018+.

When you click on any of the the color ramps (Distance or Height Gradient), the Gradient Editor pops
up.

Fog Image Effect is being used in Wanderer demo scene (more subtle) and Valley Demo scenes
(more accentuated). For the Valley demo scenes we prepared a couple of presets to be found in the demo
scene folder.
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 14

Fog Image Effect. Inspector panel interface

Gradient editor controls the colors of the gradient. To open it, click on Distance Gradient or Height
Gradient. The bottom row of breakpoints (pointing up) is the selection of the colors. The above row (pointing
down) controls opacity of the area it points at; opacity value of one breakpoint fades into the opacity value of
the adjacent one. Same for colors.

TIP.​ If you want the area close to you to be without fog, apart from increasing ​Near​ parameter, you
can open up the color ramp(s), add a breakpoint next to the leftmost one on the ramp, select leftmost one,
make it transparent (see screenshot of Gradient Editor below). The breakpoint you created (opaque, next to
the transparent one) becomes your distance or height control.

Fog Image Effect. Gradient Editor interface.


Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 15

4.2. Outline Image Effect


Outline Image effect is, essentially, a contour on the objects on the scene. It can draw outer outlines,
inner ones or both outer and inner outlines of the objects.
Edge Color​ is a color of an outline.​ Thickness​ makes outline thicker or thinner.
Use Depth​ parameter outlines the outer contour of the objects with depth threshold control.
Use Normals​ creates outlines for “inner” parts of the objects, meaning, for those that are inside the
boundaries of the object, for every the given camera perspective. The effect depends on the geometry of an
object. So, having proper normals here is important. There is a normals threshold control.
Min Depth Threshold​ and ​Max Depth Threshold​ determine the range of depth differences where
outline should be applied. Lower values draw lines “inside” the scene resulting in more beveled image. Higher
values have more flat effect.
Min Normals Threshold​ and ​Max Normals Threshold​ determine the range of normals edges to be
outlined. Lower values increase amount of effected normals, leading to more stroked effect. Higher values
decrease amount of effected normals, leading to flatter look.

Outline Image Effect. Inspector interface.

Please, note that ​Outline Image Effect​ is a global effect, as it is used as the camera component, which
is suitable for a consistent look of your project. If you would like to outline a particular object on your scene,
you can engage the shader instead — ​‘Stylized Surface with Outline’ shader​.

5. Additional scripts

5.1. UV Scroller
Used in Wander demo scene. It scrolls waterfall texture along the Y axis.

5.2. Constant Motion


Constant Motion is a simple script that translates (moves) and rotates any object. We used it heavily
on cameras to prepare promo video footage. There is an option to translate or rotate along X, Y, Z axis, to the
vector coordinate or randomly.
TIP. Use a couple of instances of this component if you want to translate and rotate along more than
one axis and make more complex automations.
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 16

Constant motion script. Inspector interface.

6. Scenes
We tried to depict the big spectrum of possibilities using various scenes. They are one of ten million
examples of possible Flat Kit use cases. Consider viewing them as starting points or macro-preset objects for
your own project.

Valley, Wanderer​ scenes are environmental. There we tried to show the work of both fog systems of
Flat Kit. Also it is one of perspectives of displaying the shaders — how these would look in large scene.
Valley uses Terrain shader and transparent textures inside Stylized Surface Cutout shader. Valley
demo scene is also an example of obvious, rather than subtle, use of ​Fog Image Effect.​ Once the scene is
loaded, you can scan through the Fog Image Effect presets to find which one you like more. There is a Presets
chapter later in this manual with explanation how to use them.
Blueprint Grid​ (Mugs) and ​Fruit Vase​ scenes are an exhibition of most sought use cases of cel / toon
shading.
However, you can find there more experimental stuff too. It has been a temptation to overpopulate the
scenes with content, because during making these included materials — literally dozens of interesting
by-product or work-in-progress materials showed up, but we had to discard them to keep the scenes clean.
Blueprint Grid is a descriptive one, there is a text telling what we had used to get the displayed
materials.
Fruit Vase is actually the collection of scenes. There is one vase with fruits across all scenes and each
scene is dedicated to some specific look, thus uses different set of materials.
Tree Island​ scene is a showcase of more cartoony use case. Imagine 3d-platform game with such a
look. Or Any other arcade game.
Room.​ We just had to include a room.
Retro Cars. ​Retro cars are curvy. What a possibility to show how shiny (or rough) the shaders can be.

7. Presets
Unity has its own Preset management system. The preset is the saved current state of the shader, in
our case, the Flat Kit material. The presets are available across scenes and can be saved whenever you want
inside the current project. For convenience, we saved the most useful presets inside shared presets folder
(​Assets/FlatKit/PresetsShared)​ .
In Flat Kit you can find presets as ​*.mat​ Material instances (that you can drag and drop on the objects)
and ​*.preset​ Unity Presets (saved states of shaders that you can recall from interface of already applied
materials). The sets are identical. Unity presets (*.preset) are great when you have a material (*.mat) applied
to lots of objects and you want to swap it with a preset you already have.
To save the preset, select the material or an object with this material you want to save, click on the
‘mixer’ icon on top right of the shader interface on the Inspector panel. Then, the menu will pop up. Click ‘Save
Current to…’. Then you choose the destination. Once created, you can move the actual file wherever you
would like. All presets within a project will show up in the ‘Select Preset’ menu.
Flat Kit. User Manual.​ Page 17

Preset menu. How to load.

Save, recall, experiment, discard bad results, save great results, all by using Unity’s preset system.
You cat A/B this way and share the shader’s parameters across multiple separate materials. Scan through
them and once you stumble upon something close to what you are looking for, adjust the one.

TIP.​ Naming the preset files as descriptive as possible is a gratifying practice. It would save your time
later when you gather lots of them. It would be easier to navigate through them and distinguish between them,
and also the proper names would remind you what you had in mind at the moment of saving the preset. Just
look at the screenshot below.

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