Unity’s built-in include files contain global variables for your shadersA program that runs on the GPU. More info
See in Glossary: things like current object’s transformation matrices, light parameters, current time and so on. You use them in shader programs like any other variable, but if you include the relevant include file, you don’t have to declare them.
For more information on include files, see Built-in include files.
All these matrices are float4x4 type, and are column major.
| Name | Value |
| UNITY_MATRIX_MVP | Current model * view * projection matrix. |
| UNITY_MATRIX_MV | Current model * view matrix. |
| UNITY_MATRIX_V | Current view matrix. |
| UNITY_MATRIX_P | Current projection matrix. |
| UNITY_MATRIX_VP | Current view * projection matrix. |
| UNITY_MATRIX_T_MV | Transpose of model * view matrix. |
| UNITY_MATRIX_IT_MV | Inverse transpose of model * view matrix. |
| unity_ObjectToWorld | Current model matrix. |
| unity_WorldToObject | Inverse of current world matrix. |
These variables will correspond to the 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 that is rendering. For example during shadowmap rendering, they will still refer to the Camera component values, and not the “virtual camera” that is used for the shadowmap projection.
| Name | Type | Value |
| _WorldSpaceCameraPos | float3 | World space position of the camera. |
| _ProjectionParams | float4 |
x is 1.0 (or –1.0 if currently rendering with a flipped projection matrix), y is the camera’s near plane, z is the camera’s far plane and w is 1/FarPlane. |
| _ScreenParams | float4 |
x is the width of the camera’s target texture in pixelsThe smallest unit in a computer image. Pixel size depends on your screen resolution. Pixel lighting is calculated at every screen pixel. More infoSee in Glossary, y is the height of the camera’s target texture in pixels, z is 1.0 + 1.0/width and w is 1.0 + 1.0/height. |
| _ZBufferParams | float4 | Used to linearize Z buffer values. x is (1-far/near), y is (far/near), z is (x/far) and w is (y/far). |
| unity_OrthoParams | float4 |
x is orthographic camera’s width, y is orthographic camera’s height, z is unused and w is 1.0 when camera is orthographic, 0.0 when perspective. |
| unity_CameraProjection | float4x4 | Camera’s projection matrix. |
| unity_CameraInvProjection | float4x4 | Inverse of camera’s projection matrix. |
| unity_CameraWorldClipPlanes[6] | float4 | Camera frustum plane world space equations, in this order: left, right, bottom, top, near, far. |
Time is measured in seconds, and is scaled by the Time multiplier in your Project’s Time settings. There is no built-in variable that provides access to unscaled time.
| Name | Type | Value |
| _Time | float4 | Time since level load (t/20, t, t*2, t*3), use to animate things inside the shaders. |
| _SinTime | float4 | Sine of time: (t/8, t/4, t/2, t). |
| _CosTime | float4 | Cosine of time: (t/8, t/4, t/2, t). |
| unity_DeltaTime | float4 | Delta time: (dt, 1/dt, smoothDt, 1/smoothDt). |
Light parameters are passed to shaders in different ways depending on which Rendering PathThe technique that a render pipeline uses to render graphics. Choosing a different rendering path affects how lighting and shading are calculated. Some rendering paths are more suited to different platforms and hardware than others. More info
See in Glossary is used,
and which LightMode Pass Tag is used in the shader.
Forward renderingA rendering path that renders each object in one or more passes, depending on lights that affect the object. Lights themselves are also treated differently by Forward Rendering, depending on their settings and intensity. More info
See in Glossary (ForwardBase and ForwardAdd pass types):
| Name | Type | Value |
| _LightColor0 (declared in UnityLightingCommon.cginc) | fixed4 | Light color. |
| _WorldSpaceLightPos0 | float4 | Directional lights: (world space direction, 0). Other lights: (world space position, 1). |
| unity_WorldToLight (declared in AutoLight.cginc) | float4x4 | World-to-light matrix. Used to sample cookie & attenuation textures. |
| unity_4LightPosX0, unity_4LightPosY0, unity_4LightPosZ0 | float4 | (ForwardBase pass only) world space positions of first four non-important point lights. |
| unity_4LightAtten0 | float4 | (ForwardBase pass only) attenuation factors of first four non-important point lights. |
| unity_LightColor | half4[4] | (ForwardBase pass only) colors of of first four non-important point lights. |
| unity_WorldToShadow | float4x4[4] | World-to-shadow matrices. One matrix for spot lights, up to four for directional light cascades. |
Deferred shading and deferred lighting, used in the lighting pass shader (all declared in UnityDeferredLibrary.cginc):
| Name | Type | Value |
| _LightColor | float4 | Light color. |
| unity_WorldToLight | float4x4 | World-to-light matrix. Used to sample cookie & attenuation textures. |
| unity_WorldToShadow | float4x4[4] | World-to-shadow matrices. One matrix for spot lights, up to four for directional light cascades. |
Spherical harmonics coefficients (used by ambient and light probes) are set up for ForwardBase, PrePassFinal and Deferred
pass types. They contain 3rd order SH to be evaluated by world space normal (see ShadeSH9 from UnityCG.cginc).
The variables are all half4 type, unity_SHAr and similar names.
Vertex-lit rendering (Vertex pass type):
Up to 8 lights are set up for a Vertex pass type; always sorted starting from the brightest one. So if you want
to render objects affected by two lights at once, you can just take first two entries in the arrays. If there are less
lights affecting the object than 8, the rest will have their color set to black.
| Name | Type | Value |
| unity_LightColor | half4[8] | Light colors. |
| unity_LightPosition | float4[8] | View-space light positions. (-direction,0) for directional lights; (position,1) for point/spot lights. |
| unity_LightAtten | half4[8] | Light attenuation factors. x is cos(spotAngle/2) or –1 for non-spot lights; y is 1/cos(spotAngle/4) or 1 for non-spot lights; z is quadratic attenuation; w is squared light range. |
| unity_SpotDirection | float4[8] | View-space spot light positions; (0,0,1,0) for non-spot lights. |
| Name | Type | Value |
| unity_Lightmap | Texture2D | Contains lightmapA pre-rendered texture that contains the effects of light sources on static objects in the scene. Lightmaps are overlaid on top of scene geometry to create the effect of lighting. More info See in Glossary information. |
| unity_LightmapST | float4[8] | Scales and translates the UV information to the correct range to sample the lightmap texture. |
| Name | Type | Value |
| unity_AmbientSky | fixed4 | Sky ambient lighting color in gradient ambient lighting case. |
| unity_AmbientEquator | fixed4 | Equator ambient lighting color in gradient ambient lighting case. |
| unity_AmbientGround | fixed4 | Ground ambient lighting color in gradient ambient lighting case. |
| UNITY_LIGHTMODEL_AMBIENT | fixed4 | Ambient lighting color (sky color in gradient ambient case). Legacy variable. |
| unity_FogColor | fixed4 | Fog color. |
| unity_FogParams | float4 | Parameters for fog calculation: (density / sqrt(ln(2)), density / ln(2), –1/(end-start), end/(end-start)). x is useful for Exp2 fog mode, y for Exp mode, z and w for Linear mode. |
| Name | Type | Value |
| unity_LODFade | float4 | Level-of-detail fade when using LODGroup. x is fade (0..1), y is fade quantized to 16 levels, z and w unused. |
| _TextureSampleAdd | float4 | Set automatically by Unity for UI(User Interface) Allows a user to interact with your application. Unity currently supports three UI systems. More info See in Glossary only based on whether the texture being used is in Alpha8 format (the value is set to (1,1,1,0)) or not (the value is set to (0,0,0,0)). |