Physically-Based Rendering

Unity’s Standard Shader attempts to light objects in a physically accurate way. This technique is called Physically-Based Rendering or PBR for short. Instead of defining how an object looks in one lighting environment, you specify the properties of the object, for example, how metal or plastic it is.

Then, the shader computes its shading based on those factors. In practice, this works incredibly well to produce realistic 3D objects across a variety of lighting conditions. The big problem is that it is often computationally expensive.

For mobile VR, it is unlikely we will be able to hit our performance targets if we use the Standard Shader. So, we will be using simpler and less computationally expensive shaders for this course.

Next, let’s try out some simple shaders inside Unity.

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