# Materials

> Resources for using materials to define the appearance of a scene.

In Unity, you use materials and shaders together to define the appearance of your scene.

| **Page**                                                                                                                       | **Description**                                                                                                                             |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| [Introduction to materials](/engine/6000.3/manual/materials-and-shaders/materials/introduction.md)                             | Understand using materials to describe the appearance of surfaces.                                                                          |
| [Create and assign a material](/engine/6000.3/manual/materials-and-shaders/materials/create-material.md)                       | Create a material asset, and assign it to a GameObject.                                                                                     |
| [Upgrade material assets to URP or HDRP](/engine/6000.3/manual/materials-and-shaders/materials/upgrade-material.md)            | Upgrade your Built-In Render Pipeline materials to prevent them from appearing bright pink in Scene view.                                   |
| [Access material properties in a script](/engine/6000.3/manual/materials-and-shaders/materials/accessing-via-script.md)        | Modify values on a material, change colours, and swap textures at runtime.                                                                  |
| [Material Variants](/engine/6000.3/manual/materials-and-shaders/materials/materialvariant-landingpage.md)                      | Resources on managing and maintaining large numbers of materials.                                                                           |
| [Material Validator in the Built-in Render Pipeline](/engine/6000.3/manual/materials-and-shaders/materials/troubleshooting.md) | Resources on using the Material Validator in the Built-In Render Pipeline to check and fix values in materials that are too large or small. |
| [Material Inspector window reference](/engine/6000.3/manual/materials-and-shaders/materials/class-material.md)                 | Explore the properties and settings in the Material Inspector window to change how a material looks.                                        |