Transparent Cutout Vertex-Lit

Note. Unity 5 introduced the Standard Shader which replaces this shaderA program that runs on the GPU. More info
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Transparent Cutout Properties

Note. Unity 5 introduced the Standard Shader which replaces this shader.

Cutout shader is an alternative way of displaying transparent objects. Differences between Cutout and regular Transparent shaders are:

• This shader cannot have partially transparent areas. Everything will be either fully opaque or fully transparent.
• Objects using this shader can cast and receive shadows!
• The graphical sorting problems normally associated with Transparent shaders do not occur when using this shader.

This shader uses an alpha channel contained in the Base Texture to determine the transparent areas. If the alpha contains a blend between transparent and opaque areas, you can manually determine the cutoff point for the which areas will be shown. You change this cutoff by adjusting the Alpha Cutoff slider.

Vertex-Lit Properties

Note. Unity 5 introduced the Standard Shader which replaces this shader.

This shader is Vertex-Lit, which is one of the simplest shaders. All lights shining on it are rendered in a single pass and calculated at vertices only.

Because it is vertex-lit, it won’t display any pixel-based rendering effects, such as light cookies, normal mapping, or shadows. This shader is also much more sensitive to tesselation of the models. If you put a point light very close to a cube using this shader, the light will only be calculated at the corners. Pixel-lit shaders are much more effective at creating a nice round highlight, independent of tesselation. If that’s an effect you want, you may consider using a pixel-lit shader or increase tesselation of the objects instead.

Performance

Generally, this shader is very cheap to render. For more details, please view the Shader Peformance page.