ShaderLabUnity’s declarative language for writing shaders. More info
See in Glossary shadersA small script that contains the mathematical calculations and algorithms for calculating the Color of each pixel rendered, based on the lighting input and the Material configuration. More info
See in Glossary describe properties that the Material InspectorA Unity window that displays information about the currently selected GameObject, asset or project settings, allowing you to inspect and edit the values. More info
See in Glossary displays, contain multiple shader implementations for different graphics hardware, and configure fixed function hardware states. Programmable shaders like vertex and fragment programs, are just a part ShaderLab’s shader concept. This page outlines the low-level hardware shaders shader programs.
If you want to write shaders that interact with lighting, see the Surface ShadersUnity’s code generation approach that makes it much easier to write lit shaders than using low level vertex/pixel shader programs. More info
See in Glossary documentation. For some examples, see the Vertex and Fragment Shader Examples. The rest of this page assumes shaders do not interact with Unity lights like special effects and post-processed effects.
Shader programs are written in HLSL language, by embedding snippets in the shader text, inside the Pass command. They usually look like this:
Pass {
// ... the usual pass state setup ...
CGPROGRAM
// compilation directives for this snippet, e.g.:
#pragma vertex vert
#pragma fragment frag
// the Cg/HLSL code itself
ENDCG
// ... the rest of pass setup ...
}
HLSL program snippets are written between CGPROGRAM and ENDCG keywords, or alternatively between HLSLPROGRAM and ENDHLSL. The latter form does not automatically include HLSLSupport and UnityShaderVariables built-in header files.