Version: 2022.3
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Graphics.DrawMeshInstanced

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Declaration

public static void DrawMeshInstanced(Mesh mesh, int submeshIndex, Material material, Matrix4x4[] matrices, int count = matrices.Length, MaterialPropertyBlock properties = null, Rendering.ShadowCastingMode castShadows = ShadowCastingMode.On, bool receiveShadows = true, int layer = 0, Camera camera = null, Rendering.LightProbeUsage lightProbeUsage = LightProbeUsage.BlendProbes, LightProbeProxyVolume lightProbeProxyVolume = null);

Declaration

public static void DrawMeshInstanced(Mesh mesh, int submeshIndex, Material material, List<Matrix4x4> matrices, MaterialPropertyBlock properties = null, Rendering.ShadowCastingMode castShadows = ShadowCastingMode.On, bool receiveShadows = true, int layer = 0, Camera camera = null, Rendering.LightProbeUsage lightProbeUsage = LightProbeUsage.BlendProbes, LightProbeProxyVolume lightProbeProxyVolume = null);

Parameters

mesh The Mesh to draw.
submeshIndex Which subset of the mesh to draw. This applies only to meshes that are composed of several materials.
material Material to use.
matrices The array of object transformation matrices.
count The number of instances to be drawn.
properties Additional material properties to apply. See MaterialPropertyBlock.
castShadows Determines whether the Meshes should cast shadows.
receiveShadows Determines whether the Meshes should receive shadows.
layer Layer to use.
camera If null (default), the mesh will be drawn in all cameras. Otherwise it will be drawn in the given Camera only.
lightProbeUsage LightProbeUsage for the instances.

Description

Draws the same mesh multiple times using GPU instancing.

Similar to Graphics.DrawMesh, this function draws meshes for one frame without the overhead of creating unnecessary game objects. This function is now obsolete. Use Graphics.RenderMeshInstanced instead. Use this function in situations where you want to draw the same mesh for a particular amount of times using an instanced shader. Unity culls and sorts instanced Meshes as a group. It creates an axis-aligned bounding box that contains all the Meshes, calculates the center point, then uses this information to cull and sort the Mesh instances. Note that after culling and sorting the combined instances, Unity does not further cull individual instances by the view frustum or baked occluders. It also does not sort individual instances for transparency or depth efficiency.

The transformation matrix of each instance of the mesh should be packed into the matrices array. You can specify the number of instances to draw, or by default it is the length of the matrices array. Other per-instance data, if required by the shader, should be provided by creating arrays on the MaterialPropertyBlock argument using SetFloatArray, SetVectorArray and SetMatrixArray.

To render the instances with light probes, provide the light probe data via the MaterialPropertyBlock and specify lightProbeUsage with LightProbeUsage.CustomProvided. Check LightProbes.CalculateInterpolatedLightAndOcclusionProbes for the details.

Note: You can only draw a maximum of 1023 instances at once.

InvalidOperationException will be thrown if the material doesn't have Material.enableInstancing set to true, or the current platform doesn't support this API (i.e. if GPU instancing is not available). See SystemInfo.supportsInstancing.

Additional resources: Graphics.DrawMesh, Graphics.RenderMeshInstanced.