Unity Virtual Reality Projects - Second Edition

Transparent materials

Another killer of graphics processing and frame rate is the use of transparency and other rendering techniques that require each pixel to be rendered multiple times. For the sunglasses lens to appear transparent, Unity will render the solid objects behind it first, then render the semi-transparent lens pixels on top, effectively merging the pixel values. Possibly dozens of lenses stacked in front of one another causes a considerable amount of processing work.

Let's see what happens when we replace the transparent lens material with an opaque one:

1. In your Project Assets Materials folder, create a new Material and name it Lens_Opaque
2. For its Albedo color, choose an opaque gray, such as #333333FF
3. Drag a copy of Sunglasses-source ...