Instancing a material

We've seen how to set up the material graph for a small prop in the previous recipe, something that we are sure to be doing multiple times every time we create a new material. Something extra that we can now do is to create an instance of that previous asset: basically, a copy of the previous material that is quicker to edit and that doesn't need to be compiled every time we make a change.

This technique is especially useful precisely because of the removal of that compile time. As you've probably seen by now, every time you make a change to a material, you are then forced to click on the Compile and Save buttons. This can be a time consuming process in complex materials, especially if we only want to tweak a certain color or a specific value. Furthermore, the lack of compilation means that this specific type of asset can be dynamically changed at runtime, which is quite powerful!