Performance Considerations

The All In 1 3D Shader has been meticulously designed with performance in mind. This section explains important performance aspects and provides tips to help you get the best performance from the asset.

Optimized Compilation

The shader only compiles the code for effects that you've enabled, significantly reducing shader complexity during runtime. This means that disabled effects have zero performance cost - they're completely removed from the compiled shader, not just skipped with conditionals.

For example, if you only enable Outline and Glow effects, only those specific effects will be calculated by the GPU, resulting in much more efficient rendering compared to having all effects present but conditionally skipped.

Performance Characteristics

• Baseline Performance: With no effects enabled, the shader performs much better than Unity's Standard Shader, though naturally with fewer visual features active

• Comparable to Standard: With similar features enabled, performance is comparable to Unity's Standard Shader while offering much greater flexibility and a more complete feature set

• Scaling with Effects: Each effect adds some performance cost, with some effects being more expensive than others

• Mobile & VR Optimization: Hand-written, profiled code designed to work efficiently on mobile devices and VR platforms

GPU Instancing & SRP Batching

The shader fully supports GPU Instancing and SRP Batching, critical optimizations that reduce draw calls and improve performance:

• GPU Instancing: When enabled (in Advanced Configuration), allows multiple instances of the same mesh with the same material to be rendered in a single draw call

• SRP Batching: Compatible with Unity's SRP Batching system, allowing efficient batching of different materials that use the same shader variant

To take advantage of these optimizations:

1. Enable GPU Instancing in the material's Advanced Configuration

2. Use the same material instance across multiple objects when possible

Shader Variants

The All In 1 3D Shader creates different shader variants based on the combinations of effects you enable. Each unique combination generates a separate variant that Unity compiles.

While variants can increase project compilation time and build size, for normal usage of this asset (dozens of different material configurations), the impact is negligible. The runtime performance impact is also minimal - even though having many different shaders in one scene can theoretically affect performance, the actual impact is much smaller than commonly believed, even on low-end platforms.

Unity automatically handles shader variant stripping during the build process, removing unused variants from the final build. Variants in Resources folders or AssetBundles will always be included.

Best practices include allowing Unity to handle shader inclusion without modifying Graphics Settings, ensuring materials with unique configurations appear in at least one included scene, and reusing effect combinations when possible rather than creating many slightly different configurations.

This system gives you flexibility to create diverse visual effects while maintaining optimal performance.