Unity Game Optimization - Third Edition

Vertex-Lit shading (legacy)

Technically, there are more than two lighting methods. The remaining two are Vertex-Lit shading and a very primitive, feature-lax version of Deferred Rendering (in the Unity documentation, this is called the Legacy Deferred lighting Rendering Path). Vertex-Lit shading is a massive simplification of lighting, as lighting will only be considered per-vertex and not per-pixel. In other words, entire faces are colored the same based on the incoming light color rather than blending lighting colors across the face through individual pixels.

It is not expected that many, or really any, 3D games will make use of this legacy technique, since a lack of shadows and proper lighting make visualizations of depth very difficult. ...