Unity Support
Textures: Full PBR Texture Support
Models: .FBX Support
HDRIs: Full Support
How to import Poliigon Models into Unity
To import models into Unity, first select .fbx as your download format from Poliigon. Then follow one of these methods:
Go to the Assets menu. Click on ‘Import New Asset.' Next, choose your .fbx file from the unzipped download.
You can also right-click in the project toolbar. Then, select ‘Import New Asset.’ This imports the file directly into your current folder.
Finally, 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.
Drag and drop the texture files you downloaded from Poliigon into the project space.
Double-click the material in the Project space, and select HDRP/Lit as the Shader type.
Click the normal map file in the Project panel. Then, in the Inspector window, select "Normal Map" as the texture type.
In the Material Inspector, open the created material. Then, plug the Basecolor map into the ‘Base Map’ input. Next, connect the Normal map to the ‘Normal Map’ input.
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.
In the Material Inspector, go to surface options. Change ‘Displacement Mode’ to Vertex or Pixel displacement. Pixel displacement uses 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 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 third-party image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop or Gimp.
Unity’s HDRP Shader needs a ‘Mask’ map. This map combines the Ambient Occlusion map, Metallic map, and Roughness map. Each uses different color channels. While Poliigon does provide an ORM map that similarly contains multiple maps, it doesn’t match Unity’s expected setup.
To start, open the Ambient Occlusion map in your image editing software. 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.
Copy the image. Then, go to our Ambient Occlusion file. Open the ‘Channels’ panel. Click the plus icon at the bottom to add a new channel. Finally, paste the inverted roughness map into that 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:
Go to the Assets menu. Click on ‘Import New Asset.’ Next, choose your HDRI from the unzipped download.
You can also right-click in the project toolbar. Then, select ‘Import New Asset’ to import the file directly into your current folder.
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 have 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 clicking on the 3-dot 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."
Check the box in the new HDRI section to turn on HDRI Sky. Then, drag the HDRI from the Project panel into the empty field by ‘HDRI Sky.’'
