On top of the low-level native plug-in interface, Unity also supports low level rendering extensions that can receive callbacks when certain events happen. This is mostly used to implement and control low-level rendering in your plug-inA set of code created outside of Unity that creates functionality in Unity. There are two kinds of plug-ins you can use in Unity: Managed plug-ins (managed .NET assemblies created with tools like Visual Studio) and Native plug-ins (platform-specific native code libraries). More info
See in Glossary and enable it to work with Unity’s multithreaded rendering.
Due to the low-level nature of this extension the plug-in might need to be preloaded before the devices get created. Currently the convention is name-based; the plug-in name must begin GfxPlugin (for example: GfxPluginMyNativePlugin).
The rendering extension definition exposed by Unity is in the file IUnityRenderingExtensions.h, provided with the Editor (see file path Unity\Editor\Data\PluginAPI).
All platforms supporting native plug-insA platform-specific native code library that is created outside of Unity for use in Unity. Allows you can access features like OS calls and third-party code libraries that would otherwise not be available to Unity. More info
See in Glossary support these extensions.
To take advantage of the rendering extension, a plug-in should export UnityRenderingExtEvent and optionally UnityRenderingExtQuery. There is a lot of documentation provided inside the include file.
A plug-in gets called via UnityRenderingExtEvent whenever Unity triggers one of the built-in events. The callbacks can also be added to CommandBuffers via CommandBuffer.IssuePluginEventAndData or CommandBuffer.IssuePluginCustomBlit from scriptsA piece of code that allows you to create your own Components, trigger game events, modify Component properties over time and respond to user input in any way you like. More info
See in Glossary.