Prior to the introduction of the Physically Based Standard Shader, Unity was supplied with more than eighty built-in shaders which each served different purposes. These shaders are still included and available for use in Unity for backwards compatibility but we recommend you use the Standard ShaderA program that runs on the GPU. More info
See in Glossary wherever possible for new projects.
This section begins by explaining how to use the legacy built-in shaders to maximum effect. The remainder of the section details all the available shaders, grouped into related “families”.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
| Usage and Performance of Built-in Shaders | Learn how Materials, rendering pathsThe technique that a render pipeline uses to render graphics. Choosing a different rendering path affects how lighting and shading are calculated. Some rendering paths are more suited to different platforms and hardware than others. More info See in Glossary, and vertex- versus pixel-lit models affect legacy shader performance. |
| Normal Shader Family reference | Reference for legacy opaque Normal-family shaders. |
| Transparent Shader Family | Reference for legacy shaders that blend full or partial transparency from the base texture alpha. |
| Transparent Cutout Shader Family | Reference for legacy cutout shaders with hard opaque and transparent regions. |
| Self-Illuminated Shader Family | Reference for legacy shaders that self-illuminate from texture without requiring sceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info See in Glossary lights. |
| Reflective Shader Family | Reference for legacy shaders that reflect an assigned cubemapA collection of six square textures that can represent the reflections in an environment or the skybox drawn behind your geometry. The six squares form the faces of an imaginary cube that surrounds an object; each face represents the view along the directions of the world axes (up, down, left, right, forward and back). More info See in Glossary with per-texel reflectivity. |