Render Texture

Render Textures are special types of Textures that are created and updated at runtime. To use them, you first create a new Render Texture and designate one of your Cameras to render into it. Then you can use the Render Texture in a Material just like a regular Texture. The Water prefabs in Unity Standard Assets are an example of real-world use of Render Textures for making real-time reflections and refractions.

Render Textures are a Unity Pro feature.

Properties

The Render Texture Inspector is different from most Inspectors, but very similar to the Texture Inspector.

The Render Texture inspector displays the current contents of Render Texture in realtime and can be an invaluable debugging tool for effects that use render textures.

Size	The size of the Render Texture in pixels. Observe that only power-of-two values sizes can be chosen.
Aniso Level	Increases Texture quality when viewing the texture at a steep angle. Good for floor and ground textures
Filter Mode	Selects how the Texture is filtered when it gets stretched by 3D transformations:
No Filtering	The Texture becomes blocky up close
Bilinear	The Texture becomes blurry up close
Trilinear	Like Bilinear, but the Texture also blurs between the different mip levels
Wrap Mode	Selects how the Texture behaves when tiled:
Repeat	The Texture repeats (tiles) itself
Clamp	The Texture's edges get stretched

Example

A very quick way to make a live arena-camera in your game:

1. Create a new Render Texture asset using Assets->Create->Render Texture.
2. Create a new Camera using GameObject->Create Other->Camera.
3. Assign the Render Texture to the Target Texture of the new Camera.
4. Create a wide, tall and thin box
5. Drag the Render Texture onto it to create a Material that uses the render texture.
6. Enter Play Mode, and observe that the box's texture is updated in real-time based on the new Camera's output.

Hints

• Unity renders everything in the texture assigned to RenderTexture.active.

Page last updated: 2011-01-31