Material Slots

Beast Surface presets use one material slot per visible generated part family. The Per Part Materials foldout lets you inspect or override those material assignments directly.

Slots

Common Beast material slots include:

Slot	Used by
Body	Main body mesh.
Neck	Neck mesh.
Head	Head mesh.
Ear	Generated ears.
Eye	Eye surface.
Pupil	Pupil surface.
Eyelid	Upper and lower eyelids.
Jaw Upper	Upper jaw mesh.
Jaw Lower	Lower jaw mesh.
Leg Upper	Upper leg segments.
Leg Lower	Lower leg segments.
Foot	Feet.
Tail	Generated tails.

Edit the duplicated materials directly when you need different colors, metallic values, smoothness, or shader properties.

Asset Organization

Surface presets are stored separately from the shared texture assets they reference.

Folder	Contains
Assets/CreatureKit/Beasts/Presets/Surface	Reusable BeastSurfacePreset assets.
Assets/CreatureKit/TextureLibrary	Shared CreatureSurfaceTextureProfile folders, each with its profile asset, albedo map, and normal map.

The texture library belongs to Creature Kit rather than to a specific creature family. Beast surfaces and other creature modules can therefore use any profile in the pool without species restrictions.

Texture Authoring

Surface presets can stay completely untextured. This is the recommended path for cartoon, low-poly, or very graphic creatures where simple colors are part of the style.

When you want a more organic look, the Beast Surface inspector provides texture controls for the base appearance and individual part overrides. A texture profile references an albedo map, an optional normal map, normal strength, and optional metallic/smoothness values.

Built-in texture profiles use four short name prefixes for quick sorting: Alien, Fur, Geo, and Skin. Examples include AlienFlesh, AlienCrackedClay, FurCheetah, FurCowLight, FurCowDark, FurTigerCoat, GeoPebbledHide, GeoRingSpots, GeoZebraSmoothU, GeoZebraSmoothV, and SkinElephant.

Applying a texture profile writes those values into regular Unity materials. The profile asset is not read at runtime, so applications still use the same BeastSurfacePreset and Unity Material workflow.

Texture authoring is only enabled on duplicated editable Surface variants. This protects shared material folders: if several creatures use the same original preset, editing one of them will not silently change the others. Use Duplicate Surface Preset before changing texture settings.

The global profile area applies directly while you edit it. Choose Apply Scope to target either:

• Skin Parts, which writes body-like parts while leaving eyes, pupils, eyelids, jaws, and feet unchanged.
• All Parts, which writes every material slot.

The Surface preset remembers the last global texture profile and global settings used for authoring. This is informational and helps you resume editing later; it does not create a live dependency between the profile and the generated materials.

The global profile area also exposes quick material controls:

• Tiling controls texture repetition on the U and V axes. The axes are linked by default to preserve uniform scaling; use the chain button to edit U and V independently. The values are preserved when you select another texture profile.
• Color Tint and Brightness write the material base color used by URP/Lit.
• 3D Relief Multiplier scales the profile normal map strength, making the texture relief look flatter or deeper under lighting.
• Override Metallic / Smoothness lets you replace the profile metallic and smoothness values for this application pass.

The Per Part Texture Authoring foldout is collapsed by default. Open it when you need a different profile or tiling for one material slot, such as Body, Head, Tail, or Leg Upper. Selecting a per-part texture profile applies it immediately to that material slot.

Each per-part override exposes the same linked U/V Tiling row. Independent values are useful for long or narrow pieces and for textures whose vertical axis carries anatomical information. Existing Surface presets remain linked and keep their previous uniform tiling. Object-space triplanar mapping continues to use one uniform scale because it does not use mesh UV axes.

Use Clear All Textures or a per-slot Clear button to remove albedo and normal maps from the current preset materials while keeping the materials themselves.

When several slots should share a look, assign the same material or duplicate from a common source. When one part needs unique shader values, duplicate the preset first so that edits stay local to that Beast surface variant.