Scoppex Although I admit I tried assigning it to a sprite and then it worked. I only had a problem with the spine object.

That's interesting to hear. After trying the same again I noticed that the Sprite indeed remained unchanged (did not disappear) after assigning the MaterialPropertyBlock, so remained working. I might have done something wrong with my earlier testing yesterday.

In general the MaterialPropertyBlock documentation states though:

Note that this is not compatible with SRP Batcher. Using this in the Universal Render Pipeline (URP), High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) or a custom render pipeline based on the Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) will likely result in a drop in performance.

What's interesting is that it works without issues on a MeshRenderer with raptor_Material which is included in the Spine URP Shaders samples, using Spine URP 2D shaders. It seems to just occur with shader graph materials and materials using Unity's own Universal Render Pipeline/2D/Sprite-* shaders.

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    It's really annoying that something that worked and that I had a project based on in Unity 5 suddenly stops working for no reason.

    Do you have any suggestions on how I could use my own shaders in Spine and Unity 6 so that I could change their parameters without the character disappearing?

    Scoppex Is there a workaround to make it work?

    Unfortunately I know of no magic settings yet to tick which make it work without issues. Disabling SRP Batching for example would have looked promising, but made your ShaderGraph materials not display already before assigning a MaterialPropertyBlock.

    As options I see:

    • 1) Writing a shader instead of using ShaderGraph.
    • 2) Finding other means to make MaterialPropertyBlock work, e.g. making disabled SRP Batcher work with your ShaderGraph material.
    • 3) Using alternatives to MaterialPropertyBlock.

    An alternative to MaterialPropertyBlock would be managing and assigning a Material instance yourself. Assigning at a SkeletonRenderer could be done via SkeletonGraphic.CustomMaterialOverride or assigning them manually in the SkeletonRenderer.OnMeshAndMaterialsUpdated callback (see the docs here).

      Maybe I would like to use the third method. However, I have a problem here. I can assign material:
      skeletonAnimation.CustomMaterialOverride[originalMaterial] = materialInstance;

      But when I try to change its values. They do not update on my character when I use:
      materialInstance.SetFloat(propertyName, value);
      or
      meshRenderer.material.SetFloat(propertyName, value);
      How do I make it update these values?

        By the way. Is there any way to make a shader that uses alpha transparency affect the entire character and not just its individual elements? Because when you set such a shader to e.g. 50%, it makes every element transparent and then the character looks strange and you can see how it consists of these separate elements.

          Scoppex However, I have a problem here. I can assign material:
          skeletonAnimation.CustomMaterialOverride[originalMaterial] = materialInstance;

          But when I try to change its values. They do not update on my character when I use:
          materialInstance.SetFloat(propertyName, value);

          We could not reproduce any issue with that, it worked on our end without any problems. Did you create the Material instance like this:

          if (materialInstance == null)
    materialInstance = new Material(replacementMaterial);

          Are you sure that the override is at all replacing the material, or whether perhaps the originalMaterial is set to the wrong material, never replacing anything?

            Okay, so due to transparency, I first have to render to the texture. I think I understand.
            But what about my previous question.
            skeletonAnimation.CustomMaterialOverride[originalMaterial] = materialInstance;
            materialInstance.SetFloat(propertyName, value);
            this doesn't seem to update the values ​​in my object. Should there be something more in the code that refreshes the character?

              Okay, it worked. Thanks a lot Harald! Sorry I missed your previous message. I managed to find the cause and it was setting the "mask interaction" in my object to "visible outside mask".
              Now my question is whether it would be better to set MaterialPropertyBlock and rewrite the shader from ShaderGraph or assign and use this new material?
              I wonder in terms of efficiency and management (memory leaks with new materials?)?
              In the future, I would also like to use this material to animate attachments separately. That is, for example, to animate the parameters of this shader separately for the sword, shield, etc. (e.g. it would have glowing animations when they were improved). What would be the best option?

                Thanks for getting back to us, glad to hear you've figured it out.

                Now my question is whether it would be better to set MaterialPropertyBlock and rewrite the shader from ShaderGraph or assign and use this new material?

                Since the documentation lists that MaterialPropertyBlock is unsupported, it's rather risky to keep using MaterialPropertyBlock, as it might break in the future or on some platforms. I would at least recommend testing it on all target platforms if you should go with it.

                There are no real downsides with managing your own instance Materials, once you've written the respective code. Batching should be broken anyway by either different MaterialPropertyBlocks or Material instances, so you lose nothing in this regard.

                Scoppex I wonder in terms of efficiency and management (memory leaks with new materials?)?

                You should not leak the material and only create it once per Skeleton and then re-use it (by having it constantly assigned via skeletonAnimation.CustomMaterialOverride[originalMaterial] = materialInstance;).

                Scoppex In the future, I would also like to use this material to animate attachments separately. That is, for example, to animate the parameters of this shader separately for the sword, shield, etc. (e.g. it would have glowing animations when they were improved). What would be the best option?

                You can set custom materials also per slot via SkeletonRenderer.CustomSlotMaterials.
                You can check out the SkeletonRendererCustomMaterials utility component code as a reference.
                The component is also documented here:
                https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-unity-utility-components#SkeletonRendererCustomMaterials

                    Thanks again Harald for the amazing support. You are incredibly helpful.
                    So I rewrote the system from MPB to shader instances. It seems to be the best solution. So far it works without problems and I can use the shader properties again. Best regards

                    Glad it helped, thanks for your kind words!