When Your FBX Model Has No Texture in Unity

When Your FBX Model Has No Texture in Unity

When you import an FBX model file into Unity, the objects appear with a package icon. At first, everything seems to work fine—but then you realize all the materials are gray, and no textures are applied, which can be quite confusing.

When Your FBX Model Has No Texture in Unity

I tried to apply a texture to the material's Albedo slot, but the slot was grayed out and uneditable. After looking into it further, I discovered that the material imported from the FBX file was read-only.

FBX files typically include mesh, bones, animation, and material data. However, the materials themselves are imported in a non-editable state by default.

To resolve this, Unity provides an Extract Materials feature. After selecting the FBX file, I opened the Materials tab in the Inspector and clicked the “Extract Materials...” button. This allowed me to save the material as a separate asset.

When Your FBX Model Has No Texture in Unity

I created a new folder called Materials and extracted the material into it.

Then, I linked the provided color_texture.tga file to the Albedo slot.

After that, the model correctly displayed with its texture applied.

Why are FBX materials imported as read-only?

To explain briefly, FBX files are originally created in external 3D modeling tools like Blender, Maya, or 3ds Max. Unity doesn’t modify these files directly—it simply references them. This design helps protect external assets from unintended changes.

If Unity allowed you to edit embedded materials in an FBX file, any future update to the original file could overwrite your changes. That's why Unity imports embedded materials and meshes as read-only by default.

By extracting the materials, you gain full control over editing while keeping your custom settings safe, even if the FBX file is replaced or updated later.

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