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Using Poliigon assets in Unity (Updated 2025)
Using Poliigon assets in Unity (Updated 2025)

This tutorial will go over the basics of using Poliigon Assets in Unity

Updated this week

Product Support

  • Full PBR Texture Support

  • Native Model Files Available: N/A , suggested to use .fbx

  • HDRI Support

How to import Poliigon Models into Unity

To import models into Unity, make sure you’re first selecting .fbx as your download format from Poliigon. Then follow one of these methods:

  • Navigate to the Assets menu, and select ‘Import New Asset’, then select your .fbx from the unzipped download.

  • You can also simply right click in the project toolbar and select ‘Import New Asset’ that way, which will import the file directly to the folder you’re currently in.

  • Lastly, you can drag and drop the .fbx file right from a file window

How to import Poliigon PBR Textures into Unity

  • To import materials into Unity, right click anywhere in the project space, and select Create > Material. For the purpose of this guide we’re using the HDRP Project and HDRP/Lit Shader

  • Create a folder for texture map files if you wish, by right clicking in the Project space and selecting Create > Folder

  • Open the folder and drag and drop the texture files you downloaded from Poliigon

  • With the created material open in the Material Inspector, plug the Basecolor map into the ‘Base Map’ input, and the Normal map into the ‘Normal Map’ input. You’ll need to click on the normal map file in the Project panel, then in the Inspector window, choose “Normal Map’ for the texture type.

  • The displacement map requires a few additional settings, depending on the desired look.

    • First, click on the displacement map in your project panel, then in the Inspector, deselect the ‘sRGB’ checkbox

    • Under surface options, change ‘Displacement Mode’ to either Vertex or Pixel displacement. Pixel displacement use parallax to fake geometry displacement. Vertex displacement will attempt to actually deform the geometry itself.

    • For more detailed displacement, you can switch the shader type to HDRP/Tessellation. This will subdivide the mesh based on the displacement map to provide more detail.

    • Regardless of the displacement type, once it’s turned on, you’ll now see a ‘Height Map’ input. You can drag the Displacement map to this input, and adjust the amplitude to the desired look.

  • For the remaining map, you’ll need to create a custom texture file using a 3rd party image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop or Gimp.

    • Unity’s HDRP shader expects a ‘Mask’ map, which includes the Ambient Occlusion map, Metallic Map, and Roughness map all in one, using different color channels. While Poliigon does provide an ORM map which similarly contains multiple maps, it doesn’t match Unity’s expected setup.

      • To start, open the Ambient Occlusion map in (for the sake of this guide) Adobe Photoshop. Switch the image type by selecting Image > Mode > RGB, this way we have access to the individual color channels.

      • Next open the Roughness map. We’ll need to invert it by selecting Image > Adjustments > Invert. Now copy the image, and then back in our Ambient Occlusion file, go to the ‘Channels’ panel, then click the plus icon at the bottom to add a new channel, then past the inverted roughness map in the new channel.

      • Next open the Metallic map. Copy the map, and paste it into the red channel of our AO file.

      • Finally, the blue channel is intended for a detail map by Unity, which we won’t be using for this guide. You can select the Blue channel, then select Edit > Fill > and select 100% black, as the channel won’t be used

    • Save the file as a .Tif, then drag the saved file into unity wherever you added the rest of the maps in the previous steps. You can now drag the newly created mask map to the mask input.

How to import Poliigon HDRIs into Unity

To import HDRIs into Unity, follow one of these methods:

  • Navigate to the Assets menu, and select ‘Import New Asset’, then select your HDRI from the unzipped download.

  • You can also simply right click in the project toolbar and select ‘Import New Asset’ that way, which will import the file directly to the folder you’re currently in.

  • Lastly, you can drag and drop the HDRI file right from a file window.

  • Next, click on the HDRI in the project panel. In the Inspector window make the following adjustments:

    • change ‘Texture Shape’ to ‘Cube’

    • toward the bottom of the window, you can set the max size and compression. This may be useful if you’ve downloaded a very high resolution HDRI and want to save on rendering performance

    • Click ‘Apply’ and wait for the settings to update.

  • Create a new material by right clicking in the Project Panel and selecting Create > Material

    • Click on the material, and in the Inspector window:

      • set the shader type to Skybox/Cubemap

      • drag the HDRI into the empty Cubemap slot in the Inspector Window

  • Next right click in the Hierarchy panel and select Volume > Sky and Fog Global Volume

  • In the Inspector window, make the following adjustments:

    • Change ‘Sky Type’ to ‘HDRI Sky’

    • Remove the ‘Physically Based Sky’ by click on the 3 dots menu on the right side, and selecting ‘Remove’

    • at the bottom of the window, select ‘Add Override’. In the pop-up, you can search for HDRI, and select “HDRI Sky’

    • Click the checkbox in the newly added HDRI section to enable HDRI Sky

    • Add the HDRI from the Project panel to the empty field next to ‘HDRI Sky’

      • Adjust the HDRI as you wish by enabling other settings in the Inspector Window such as Intensity Mode, Rotation etc.

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