Stylized Color Swapper & Material Optimizer

The Color Swapper is a tool that lives inside Unity's editor and lets you change the colors and look of your 3D models without leaving Unity or opening an image-editing program. You pick a model, paint new colors onto it in a 3D preview window, and save the result as a ready-to-use version, all in a few clicks, with no separate image files to manage.

Quick Start

Want to jump straight in? Here's the fastest path from install to your first painted model:

1. Open the tool: From Unity's menu bar, go to Tools > DPT Games > Stylized Color Swapper.
2. Set your target: Drag the GameObject you want to recolor (from your Scene Hierarchy or Project window) into the Target Object field at the top of the window.
3. Start painting: The tool scans the model automatically and drops you straight into the 3D preview. Pick a swatch, choose a color, and click or drag directly on the model to paint.

How It Works, Step by Step

The tool never changes your original files by accident, it always works on a copy, and nothing is saved until you click a save button. Here's the general process:

1. Pick a model: Drag the object or model you want to recolor into the tool's window.
2. Scan it: The tool looks at the model's current colors and sorts its surface into a list of color groups (called "swatches") that you can edit one at a time, or several at once.
3. Paint it: In the 3D preview window, you paint new colors, blend smooth color transitions, apply realistic material looks (like wood or metal), round off sharp edges, add a glow, or set up gentle wind movement, all by clicking and dragging directly on the model.
4. Save it: Once you're happy with it, the tool saves your changes as a new, game-ready version of the model.

Scanning Your Model & Choosing How to Save

Before you can paint, the tool needs to read your model's current colors. There are a few ways it can do that, and a couple of ways it can save the result.

How the Tool Reads Your Model's Colors

Two extra options fine-tune how scanning works: Combine Similar Colors (Alt+C) merges colors that are nearly identical into a single group, so you're not stuck editing near-duplicates separately. Split Disconnected Islands (Alt+I) keeps physically separate pieces that happen to share the same color (like two arms) as independently editable groups, instead of lumping them together. When you save, any groups that end up with identical colors are automatically merged back together to keep the result efficient.

Extra Accuracy Settings

A few more settings control how carefully the tool reads and rebuilds your model:

• Auto-Uncompress Textures: Some image files are compressed to save space, which can make colors look slightly blurry or blocky when sampled directly. This option temporarily undoes that compression while scanning, so the colors it picks up are accurate. If it spots a compressed image, it will offer a one-click Re-Scan (Lossless) button to redo the scan at full quality.
• Adaptive Tessellation: If a model needs extra fine detail preserved (like small text, a logo, or a decal) when its colors are saved directly onto the model rather than an image, this setting automatically adds a bit of extra geometry only where it's needed to capture that detail. Protect Smooth Surfaces stops naturally curved surfaces (like wheels) from being cut up unnecessarily, Max Subdivision limits how much extra detail is added, and Color Threshold sets how big a color difference has to be before extra detail kicks in. It works best on blocky, hard-surface models, it won't do much for models that are already low-detail and mostly one color.
• Auto-Unwrap (Lossless): Some models don't have a clean "layout" for how a flat image wraps around their 3D shape. This automatically builds a clean one when needed, without touching your original file. The Hard Edge Cutoff slider controls how aggressively it's allowed to add seams (the invisible cut lines needed to unfold a 3D shape flat) a lower value hides those seams on sharper corners.
• Smooth Normals (Per Piece): Smooths out how light reflects off blocky, low-detail surfaces (like campfire stones or chopped logs) without adding any extra geometry, it just changes how the lighting looks. Works no matter which save option you use.

How the Result Gets Saved

Ways to Select Parts of Your Model

The tool gives you three selection scopes, plus a quick shortcut. Switch between them using the toolbar buttons or by pressing I:

Smooth Color Gradients & Gentle Wind Sway

Only available in Vertex Bake & Pack mode (the recommended option). The Gradient Paint tool (G) lets you click and drag across the model to smoothly blend from one color or setting to another, instead of applying one flat value everywhere.

Vertex Bake & Pack: Why Use It

Vertex Bake & Pack stores your colors and material settings directly on the mesh, so it needs no texture at all. That means you can run an entire scene of visually distinct props off as few as 1 master material, and when you're using Zones to drive the color variation, even thousands of those differently-colored copies can still batch together. It's also the only mode that supports Gradient Paint, so you can blend colors and settings smoothly across the model instead of applying one flat value everywhere.

The 3D Preview Window

Instead of using Unity's normal scene view, the tool opens its own dedicated 3D preview window. This lets you paint a model without needing to place it in your actual game scene first.

Toolbar & Shortcut Reference

Once you've scanned a model, the toolbar underneath the preview window gives you these tools. Most shortcuts are turned off while you're typing in a text box (like the save-path field).

Texel Density & Smooth Normals

Found in the color-editing panel, these settings help patterns look consistent in size and let you control how rounded or sharp your model's edges appear:

One-Click Material Looks (Feature IDs)

When saving in Vertex Bake & Pack mode, you can give any painted piece a realistic surface look with one click, instead of having to hand-paint the detail yourself.

Select a piece, then use the Feature ID dropdown to choose from these looks:

• Default (None) - Just your painted color and settings, with no extra surface detail added.
• Wood - Adds both a wood-tone color tint and a wood-grain surface pattern, changing the color as well as the surface detail.
• Fur - Adds a color tint the same way Wood does, but without any surface normal pattern.
• Bark, Steel, Copper, Cast Iron, Leather, Cloth, Stone, Rope, Foliage - Each adds its own realistic surface pattern (like scratches, weave, or grain) without changing the color underneath.

Fine-Tuning a Material Look

Once you've picked a Feature ID, a few more controls appear:

• Detail Scale: Makes the pattern (like wood grain) bigger or smaller.
• Detail Rotation: Rotates the pattern, useful if it's running in the wrong direction, like sideways wood grain.
• Blend Detail: Blends the pattern smoothly across the model's surface so it doesn't look tiled or repetitive, with separate Face and Seam strength sliders for regular edges and for sharper seams.
• Apply Wind: Adds a swaying motion to the surface detail, with a Strength slider (or use Gradient Paint's Wind channel for more natural, directional sway).

Zones (Tagging Areas for Later Use)

In Vertex Bake & Pack mode, you can also tag each piece with a Zone ID from 0 to 7. This doesn't change how anything looks right now inside the tool, it's a way to mark different areas so your game's code or shader can treat them differently later on (for example, applying random color variety only within certain zones).

• Switch the Change Channel to Zones to see each piece shown in a distinct zone color instead of its actual paint color.
• With a piece selected, either drag the Zone slider (0-7), or paint directly in the preview the same way you'd paint a color, while this channel is active, your brush applies a zone number instead of a color.
• Zone 7 is the default/fallback zone; use 0-6 for zones you plan to use in your own game logic or shader effects.

Managing Your Color Palettes

Two side-by-side color grids help you keep your color choices consistent across different models.

• Custom Palette (Left): 18 color slots that you fill in yourself. These are saved on your computer and stick around across every project. Click any slot to load that color into your brush.
• Imported Palette (Right): Automatically fills in with whatever colors were found when you scanned the current model.
• Copy Button: Copies the colors from the Imported Palette straight into your Custom Palette, so you can reuse them on other models later.

You can also use the Export Palette (PNG) and Import Palette (PNG) buttons to save or load your Custom Palette as a small image file, useful for backing it up or sharing a consistent color scheme with teammates.

Handling Models With Multiple Materials

If your model uses more than one material, each one that has its own image gets its own section in the settings panel, labeled by name. In each section you can independently set that material's Base Color, along with its Metallic/Smoothness/AO input, either as one combined Packed MRAO map or as separate Metal, Smooth, and AO texture slots, depending on that material's PBR Mode. Leave anything blank to keep whatever the tool automatically detected.

Raycast AO Baker

A separate tool (not part of the main painting workflow) that calculates realistic shading in corners and crevices (Ambient Occlusion, or AO) by simulating how light would actually be blocked around your model, rather than relying on any pre-made image.

• Rays Per Vertex: How many light samples are taken at each point, higher gives a cleaner result but takes longer to calculate.
• Max Distance: How far a simulated ray of light can travel before it's counted as unblocked.
• Intensity: How strong the resulting shading looks overall.
• Blur Passes: Reduces any graininess in the result.
• Bake Target: Choose whether the AO is stored directly on the model, or baked out to a separate texture (with a Match Base Color button to automatically match the resolution of your other images).

Click Compute & Bake Global Raycast AO to run it. This tool is hidden if you're in Texture Coloring mode with Optimize Palette Size turned on, the AO bake needs each part of the model to have its own separate space in the image, and that option specifically removes that separate space to save disk size. Rather than produce a broken result, the tool simply hides itself in that case.

Saving Your Work

Once you're happy with your changes, use the buttons at the bottom of the window to save. Which ones you see depends on what you're working on:

• Apply to Scene Object: Only shows up if you're editing something already placed in your scene. Saves your new version to disk, keeps a backup copy of the original, and automatically swaps the new version into your scene so you can keep adjusting it.
• Create New Version: Saves a separate, standalone copy to your chosen folder, without touching the model you started with.

A separate setting controls what happens to the material file itself each time you save:

• Make a New Copy Each Time: Creates a fresh material file every time you save.
• Share One Copy: Every save in the same session shares a single material file instead of getting its own.
• Reuse the Existing Material: Points every save at your original material with no new file created at all.
• Edit the Original Directly: Changes your existing material file itself, instead of creating anything new.
• Leave It Alone: Doesn't touch the material assignment at all.

Whichever save button you use, here's what happens behind the scenes:

1. Makes a copy of your original model.
2. Applies your painted colors to that copy.
3. Stores your Metallic, Smoothness, and AO settings efficiently on the model.
4. Applies any Smooth Normals you set up.
5. Saves the new model (and a new image, if you chose that save option) to your chosen folder.
6. Creates or updates a ready-to-use version that's already set up with the right material.

Troubleshooting & Common Questions

Support & Getting Help

For any technical help, bug reports, or general questions, please get in touch through the Contact Formit's the most reliable way to get help with anything you run into.

You can also use the same form to ask about custom freelance work, for example, if you need outside 3D models specially prepared for this tool, or need help with things like wind effects or level-of-detail setup for your game.