Unity Material constructor not applying Shader

Question

I am proceedurally generating a generic game object and trying to make it transparent using the default diffuse transparency shader.

meshRenderer.materials[0]=new Material(Shader.Find("Transparent/Diffuse"));
meshRenderer.materials[0].color = new Color(0f,1f,0f,0.05f);

Just seems to make it Default-Diffuse, but if I do this

meshRenderer.materials[0]=new Material(Shader.Find("Transparent/Diffuse"));
meshRenderer.materials[0].shader = Shader.Find("Transparent/Diffuse");
meshRenderer.materials[0].color = new Color(0f,1f,0f,0.05f);

It works just fine and I get transparency. The Material constructor looks like it takes the exact same shader, but it doesnt seem to be applying. Why? I am already explicitly inluding the shader in the project settings.

Answer 1

You can change material of your gameObject using:

renderer.material = new Material(Shader.Find("Transparent/Diffuse"));
renderer.material.color = new Color(0f,1f,0f,0.05f);

which seems to work fine. I was searching unity3d forums and found this which also seems to work fine. Here's the code for the same:

var meshRenderer = GetComponent<MeshRenderer>();
var mat = new Material(Shader.Find("Transparent/Diffuse"));
mat.color = new Color(0f,1f,0f,0.05f);
var matArray = new Material[]{mat};
meshRenderer.materials = matArray;