Unity Layered/Lit Texture

4 min readSep 12, 2022

Layered/Lit textures are textures that have more than one texture combined. IE, mixed textures to create one texture. You can mix up to 4 in total. I made a couple with 2 layers.

Layered Lit Shader

The Layered Lit Shader allows you to stack up to four Materials on the same GameObject in the High Definition Render…

docs.unity3d.com

First chose two materials

Then I created a new Material and set it to Layered/Lit

Now you will see the option to input at least two materials. I will keep this set at 2. I put my chosen materials into the slots. The main layer will be the cobblestone, layer 1 will be the grass.

**It is normal for you to only see the grass material at this juncture.**

Now a Layer Mask needs to be implemented. I used Photoshop to do this. It was a bit of a pain in the butt, but I still did it the easy way. I didn't go into super detail with the brushes. The amazing this to me is that it still worked as I wanted it to. Next time I will spend the time to get it much more detailed.

Hover over cobblestone 01 material
Right-click and go to show in the explorer
I dragged and dropped the cobblestone 01 Mask Map into photoshop
Created another layer
Used the brush tool to brush black over what won't need the grass to show and white over the areas that will show the grass texture

The end result is my first-ever layer mask map. It is ugly, but it is mine and I love the fact that it works.

I then used save as/PNG so I won't write over the original mask map. I named it Layer Mask Map and now it is inside the Unity editor.

Drag and drop the new layer mask onto the Dual.1 Material Surface Input Layer Mask. Now adjustment options can be messed with to create different blend levels and even color changes.

Another way to get this done can be to use something else altogether as the layer mask. For example the cobblestone height map. Before just dropping the existing height map into the layered map slot I will use the height map in photoshop to do a bit of editing. Then will make a copy and rename it that way I don't lose the original.

Right-click on cobblestone 01/Open in explorer

Now, in Photoshop go to Image/Adjustments/Levels
Set the Levels and Invert (Ctrl-I)
Then save it with its own name and don't overwrite the original. Now you have a new Height/Layer Mask
Drag and Drop the Height/Layered mask into Surface Inputs/Layer Mask