Surface Shader
- Game Development course
- Advanced
- Lesson 3/71
- 4 min
Learn the Surface Shader structure and #pragma surface.
Surface Shader Structure
Included in Unity's Built-in Render Pipeline, Surface Shaders automatically handle intricate lighting and shadow calculations on your behalf. Rather than writing low-level lighting math, you only define surface properties.
CGPROGRAM
#pragma surface surf Standard fullforwardshadows
#pragma target 3.0
ENDCGThe #pragma surface directive notifies the compiler of the surface function and lighting model to be used.
The surf Function and Surface Outputs
At the core of a Surface Shader is the surf function. It takes UV coordinates as input and fills out the SurfaceOutputStandard struct.
void surf (Input IN, inout SurfaceOutputStandard o)
{
o.Albedo = float3(1.0, 0.5, 0.2); // Base color
o.Metallic = 0.5; // Metallicness
o.Smoothness = 0.8; // Smoothness
}Properties set here like Albedo and Smoothness are automatically illuminated by scene lights like Directional Light and Point Light.
Practice Surface Shader lighting
Define a Start method. Inside, declare string aydinlatma = "Standard"; and print "Aydinlatma modeli: " + aydinlatma to the console.
Starter code
using UnityEngine;
public class SurfaceLogger : MonoBehaviour
{
// Start icinde aydinlatma degiskenini tanimla ve yazdir
}Sample solution
using UnityEngine;
public class SurfaceLogger : MonoBehaviour
{
void Start()
{
string aydinlatma = "Standard";
Debug.Log("Aydinlatma modeli: " + aydinlatma);
}
}Expected output
Aydinlatma modeli: Standard
Questions and answers
Review the lesson questions together with their answers. To test yourself, solve the lesson interactively.
1 Which compilation directive declares the surface function and the lighting model to use in a Surface Shader?
- #pragma surface surf Standard Correct answer
- #pragma fragment frag
- #include "UnityCG.cginc"
- #define LIGHTING_ON
Explanation: The #pragma surface directive declares the surface function name (e.g. surf) and the lighting model (e.g. Standard) to the compiler.
2 Surface directive
#pragma ____ surf Standard fullforwardshadows#pragma surface surf Standard fullforwardshadowsExplanation: The '#pragma surface' keyword is used in surface shader declarations.
3 Surface Shader elements
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
#pragma surface |
Declares surface function and lighting |
surf |
Function populating surface properties |
Albedo |
Base diffuse color of the surface |
SurfaceOutputStandard |
Standard PBR lighting output struct |