Introduction to rendering paths in the Built-In Render Pipeline

Unity’s Built-In Render Pipeline supports different rendering paths. A rendering path is a series of operations related to lighting and shading. Different rendering paths have different capabilities and performance characteristics. Deciding on which rendering path is most suitable for your Project depends on the type of Project, and on the target hardware.

You can choose the rendering path that your Project uses in the Graphics window, and you can override that path for each 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.

If the GPU on the device running your Project does not support the rendering path that you have selected, Unity automatically uses a lower fidelity rendering path. For example, on a GPU that does not handle Deferred Shading, Unity uses Forward Rendering.

• Forward is the default rendering path in the Built-in Render Pipeline. It is a general-purpose rendering path.
• Deferred is the rendering path with the most lighting and shadow fidelity in the Built-in Render Pipeline.
• Legacy Vertex Lit is the rendering path with the lowest lighting fidelity and no support for real-time shadows. It is a subset of the Forward rendering path.

Rendering Path comparison