ShaderLab pass tags in the Built-In Render Pipeline reference

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.

Find the LightMode tag values you can use to control which pass the Built-In Render Pipeline executes.

If you do not set the LightMode tag in a Pass, the Built-In Render Pipeline uses the Always tag value for that Pass.

Value	Function
`Always`	Always rendered; does not apply any lighting. This is the default value.
`ForwardBase`	Used in Forward rendering; applies ambient, main directional light, vertex/SH lights and lightmaps.
`ForwardAdd`	Used in Forward rendering; applies additive per-pixel lights, one Pass per light.
`Deferred`	Used in Deferred Shading; renders G-buffer.
`ShadowCaster`	Renders object depth into the shadowmap or a depth texture.
`MotionVectors`	Used to calculate per-object motion vectors.
`Vertex`	Used in legacy Vertex Lit rendering when the object is not lightmapped; applies all vertex lights.
`VertexLMRGBM`	Used in legacy Vertex Lit rendering when the object is lightmapped, and on platforms where the lightmap is RGBM encoded (PC & console).
`VertexLM`	Used in legacy Vertex Lit rendering when the object is lightmapped, and on platforms where lightmap is double-LDR encoded (mobile platforms).
`Meta`	This Pass is not used during regular rendering, only for lightmap baking or Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination. For more information, refer to Lightmapping and shaders.

Additional resources

Lighting variables in the Built-In Render Pipeline reference

Shader methods in the Built-In Render Pipeline reference