Hi,
In a 3D scene with no lighting (unlit / vertex colored / SVG / etc), is there any performance gain from turning off the lighting options on a MeshRenderer, ie. Light Probes, Reflection Probes, Cast Shadows, Receive Shadows, etc?
I assume these would just get ignored if there are no lights, but just wondering if there is still any overhead if they’re left on the defaults (especially in a complex scene with many objects)…?
Reviving a dead post because it’s asking the exact question I have.
I also have the same question.
There was an overhead years ago for sure (at least for Reflection / Light Probes), but I haven’t tried it recently.
But I’ve been in the habit of turning those off anyway.
Try it?
Did an inverted test of this a while back in 2019.4LTS, wherein I turned a light on, in a game that has no lights.
There was no noticeable increase in rendering time, so I went around and turned off every single aspect of light interaction in every single object in the game (took a couple of days) and then turned off that light again.
Got a good performance boost, and entering Play Mode became a bit snappier, too.
Thank you for the feedback!
I think the best thing to do would be to make a preset with all lighting turned of that can be applied to my Mesh Renderers.