Fast Lighting

The Fast Lighting system provides an optimized lighting solution for low-end platforms like mobile and VR, where performance is critical. By eliminating traditional scene lights and using a specialized lighting configuration, you can achieve visually appealing results while maintaining excellent single-pass performance.

Overview and Benefits

Fast Lighting is designed specifically for scenarios where:

• You need to maximize performance on mobile or VR platforms

• You want consistent lighting with minimal GPU overhead

• You're targeting lower-end hardware that struggles with traditional lighting

The key advantage of this system is that you can maintain visual quality while significantly reducing rendering overhead. When properly configured with no shadows, Fast Lighting delivers exceptional single-pass performance.

Setup Process

Setting up Fast Lighting is a straightforward process:

1. Remove Scene Lights: First, ensure there are no traditional lights in your scene. This prevents performance overhead from standard lighting calculations and ensures all objects use the Fast Lighting system consistently.

2. Enable Fast Lighting Light Mode: In your material inspector, locate the "Light Mode" section and select "Fast Lighting" from the dropdown menu:

1. Add FastLightingConfigurator Component: Add this component to any GameObject in your scene (preferably an empty GameObject dedicated to lighting configuration):

Configuring Fast Lighting

Once you've added the FastLightingConfigurator component, you just need to change the Global Light Direction.

Performance Tips

To get the best performance from Fast Lighting:

1. Disable Shadows Completely: For maximum performance, ensure shadows are turned off in both the Fast Lighting configurator and in your materials.

2. Limit Material Complexity: While Fast Lighting is efficient, combining it with many other complex shader effects will still impact performance. Use only the effects you need.

3. Monitor Performance: Use the Unity Profiler to verify that you're getting the expected performance benefits from Fast Lighting.