Your First Material

This is a hands-on tour through Genesis’s most-used inspector controls. You will start with a plain default material on a sphere, then progressively enable surface, lighting, and stylization features until the sphere looks like a toon-shaded prop. The point is to learn the inspector layout, not to ship the asset.

Requirements

• Unity with Genesis installed (see Installation).
• URP configured and active.
• A test mesh — the Unity sphere primitive is fine.
• Two textures — any albedo + normal map pair from the included samples.

Steps

1. Create the material

Right-click in the Project window and choose Create > Genesis > Material. Name it M_FirstGenesis.

2. Drop it on a sphere

Drag the material onto a sphere in the Scene view. By default it renders as a smooth gray Lit material — visually similar to URP/Lit.

3. Assign albedo and normal maps

Expand the Maps foldout in the inspector. Drag your albedo into _BaseMap and your normal into _BumpMap. Toggle Normal Map on if it is not already.

4. Switch to Toon mode

In the Surface foldout, change Rendering Mode from Lit to Toon. The lighting flattens immediately and a cel-shaded preview appears.

5. Enable cel shading and outline

In the Lighting foldout, toggle Cel Shading on. Choose Stepped, set Steps = 3. Then in the Effects foldout, toggle Outline on and set Width = 1.5, Color = black.

Verifying

Rotate the Scene view light. The cel bands should swing across the sphere. If they do not, Receive Shadows may be off on the renderer.

Next steps

• Quick Start Guide — a faster recipe.
• Understanding the Inspector
• Cel Shading — the deep dive.