Which one of the mobile transparent shaders is currently the fastest?

Unity Engine
,
1

Which one of the mobile transparent shaders is currently the fastest? Or should I better try to make my own?

2

the mobile ones are at the edge of where you can go, you can’t get any faster.
The major problem of transparent in the context of performance is unavoidable: its transparent and thus fillrate hungry as it automatically means redraw

3

I read that the vertex lit is the fastest of the mobile shaders

4

Generally. The built-in shaders can’t account for everything you’d want to do, with maximum efficiency. You ask which one is the fastest, but that doesn’t really make any sense. You shouldn’t pick a shader and then make art based on its limitations. You should decide what you need, and use a shader that provides for only that. It may be better to complicate the material a little bit, if it will help with atlasing/batching, however.

5

What I want is a shader for cloud particles.

6

So far I’m happy with this one - any nonsense in this shader or is there something to make it faster?

Shader "Mobile/TransparentShader"
{
	Properties
	{
	       _MainTex ("Base (RGB)", 2D) = "white" {}
	}
	SubShader
	{
		
		Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha

		Tags { "Queue"="Transparent" "IgnoreProjector"="True" "RenderType"="Transparent"}
		ZWrite Off
		Lighting Off
		
		Pass
		{
		GLSLPROGRAM
		
		#ifdef VERTEX	
		varying lowp vec2 uv;

		void main()
		{
			gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex;
			uv = gl_MultiTexCoord0.xy;
		}
		#endif

		#ifdef FRAGMENT
		uniform lowp sampler2D _MainTex;
		varying lowp vec2 uv;

		void main()
		{
			gl_FragColor = texture2D(_MainTex, uv);
		}
		#endif
		ENDGLSL
		}
	}
}
7

If that gives you the effect you need, it’s not going to get any faster (except maybe for the precision switch I’m about to suggest). However…

  • (RGB) is a lie.
  • Lighting Off is useless.
  • Putting a varying in both parts of the shader is unnecessary. Just use global scope.
  • lowp is not a speed benefit for the UVs. highp might be fine in this case, but there’s an Apple doc that suggests that texture2D might take a mediump. So I’m not sure what would be faster, but bump it up.
8

Shader warning in ‘Mobile/TransparentShader’: Shader is not supported on this GPU (none of subshaders/fallbacks are suitable)