Graphics

Use the Graphics settings (main menu: Edit > Project Settings, then select the Graphics category) to apply global settings for Graphics.

This section provides documentation on the following groups of properties:

• Scriptable Render Pipeline Settings
• Camera Settings
• Tier Settings
• Built-in shader settings
• Always-included Shaders
• Shader stripping
• Shader preloading

Scriptable Render Pipeline Settings

This allows you to define a series of commands to control exactly how the SceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
See in Glossary should be rendered (instead of using the default rendering pipeline used by Unity). For more information on this feature, see the Scriptable Render Pipeline package documentation.

Camera Settings

These properties control various renderingThe process of drawing graphics to the screen (or to a render texture). By default, the main camera in Unity renders its view to the screen. More info
See in Glossary settings.

Tier Settings

The Tier settings allow you to make platform-specific adjustments to rendering and shader compilation, by tweaking built-in defines. For example, you can use this to enable Cascaded Shadows on high-tier iOSApple’s mobile operating system. More info
See in Glossary devices, but to disable them on low-tier devices to improve performance. Tiers are defined by Rendering.GraphicsTier.

You can only change Graphics Tier settings in the Built-in Render Pipeline.

Built-in shader settings

Use these settings to specify which Shader to use for each of the listed built-in features.

For each of these features, you can choose which type of Shader to use:

• No Support disables this calculation. Use this setting if you are not using deferred shading or lighting. This will save some space in the built game data files.
• Built-in Shader uses Unity’s built-in Shaders to do the calculation. This is the default.
• Custom Shader uses your own compatible Shader to do the calculation. This enables you to do deep customization of deferred rendering.

When you choose Custom shader, a ShaderA 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 reference property appears below the feature property where you can set a reference to the Shader you want to use.

Always-included Shaders

Specify a list of Shaders that are always stored along with the Project, even if nothing in your Scene actually uses them. It is important to add Shaders used by streamed AssetBundles to this list to ensure they can be accessed.

To add a shader to the list, increase the value in the Size property.

To remove the last Shader in the list, decrease the Size property.

To remove a Shader which is not the last one in the list, you can set the value to None.

Shader stripping

Lower your build data size and improve loading times by stripping out certain shaders.

By default, Unity looks at your Scenes and lightmapping settings to figure out which fogA post-processing effect that overlays a color onto objects depending on the distance from the camera. Use this to simulate fog or mist in outdoor environments, or to hide clipping of objects near the camera’s far clip plane. More info
See in Glossary and lightmapping modes are not in use, and skips corresponding Shader variantsAn internal version of the Shader that Unity generates according to the specific combination of Shader keywords and their status. If you add more keywords to the Shader, you increase the number of possible combinations, which results in more Shader Variants. More info
See in Glossary.

However, you can choose specific modes if you are building asset bundles to ensure that the modes you want to use are included.

Lightmapping

By default, the Lightmap modes property defaults to Automatic, meaning that Unity decides which shader variants to skip.

To specify which modes to use yourself, change this to Custom and enable or disable the following lightmapping modes:

• Baked Non-Directional
• Baked Directional
• Realtime Non-Directional
• Realtime Directional
• Baked Shadowmask
• Baked Subtractive

Fog

By default, the Fog Modes property defaults to Automatic, meaning that Unity decides which shader variants to skip.

To specify which modes to use yourself, change this to Custom and enable or disable the following fog modes:

• Linear
• Exponential
• Exponential Squared

Instancing Shader variants

Unity strips instancing variants if GPU instancing is not enabled on any GameObjectThe fundamental object in Unity scenes, which can represent characters, props, scenery, cameras, waypoints, and more. A GameObject’s functionality is defined by the Components attached to it. More info
See in Glossary in the Scene. You can use the Instancing Variants property to override the default stripping behavior.

Shader preloading

Specify a list of shader variant collection assetsAny media or data that can be used in your game or Project. An asset may come from a file created outside of Unity, such as a 3D model, an audio file or an image. You can also create some asset types in Unity, such as an Animator Controller, an Audio Mixer or a Render Texture. More info
See in Glossary to preload while loading the game. Shader variants specified in this list are loaded during entire lifetime of the application. Use it for preloading very frequently used shaders. See Optimizing Shader Load Time page for details.

To add a shader variant collection to the list, increase the value in the Size property.

See also

• Optimizing Shader Load Time
• Optimizing Graphics Performance
• Shaders reference

• 10–01–2018 Page amended
• Updated for Unified Settings changes
  
• Updated Tier Setting description
  
• New features added in 5.6