A CameraA component which creates an image of a particular viewpoint in your scene. The output is either drawn to the screen or captured as a texture. More info
See in Glossary can generate a depth, depth+normals, or motion vector texture. This is a minimalistic G-buffer texture that can be used for post-processing effects or to implement custom lighting models.
These are mostly used by effects; for example, post-processing effects often use depth information.
Pixel values in the depth texture range between 0 and 1, with a non-linear distribution. Precision is usually 32 or 16 bits, depending on configuration and platform used. When reading from the Depth Texture, a high precision value in a range between 0 and 1 is returned. If you need to get distance from the Camera, or an otherwise linear 0–1 value, compute that manually using helper macros.
Depth Textures are supported on most modern hardware and graphics APIs. Special requirements are listed below:
The Camera’s depth Texture mode can be enabled using Camera.depthTextureMode variable from script. It is also possible to build similar textures yourself, using Shader Replacement feature.
There are three possible depth texture modes:
These are flags, so it is possible to specify any combination of the above textures.
Important: The Built-In Render Pipeline is deprecated and will be made obsolete in a future release.
It remains supported, including bug fixes and maintenance, through the full Unity 6.7 LTS lifecycle.
For more information on migration, refer to Migrating from the Built-In Render Pipeline to the Universal Render Pipeline and Render pipeline feature comparison.
Depth textures can come directly from the actual depth buffer, or be rendered in a separate pass, depending on the rendering path used and the hardware. Typically when using the Deferred Shading rendering path in the Built-In Render Pipeline, the depth textures come “for free” since they are a product of the G-buffer rendering anyway.
When enabled, the MotionVectors texture always comes from a extra render pass. Unity will render moving GameObjects into this buffer, and construct their motion from the last frame to the current frame.