Performance

This document explains how Summon Style: Hardline uses GPU and CPU resources, what actually costs time, and how to control performance in real projects.

Hardline replaces physically based lighting with a stylized, deterministic shading model.
This shifts performance cost away from light evaluation and toward controlled, predictable shader math.

Performance Model

Hardline sits between URP Unlit and URP Lit.

  • More expensive than Unlit
  • Significantly cheaper than Lit

This is because Hardline materials perform:

  • Screen-space shadow sampling
  • Environment color blending
  • Optional distance-based light masking

But do not perform:

  • Light loops
  • BRDF evaluation
  • Specular or reflection probe sampling
  • Per-pixel light accumulation

The cost is stable and predictable.

Hardline shaders fully support URP SRP Batching, so draw calls batch the same way as standard URP shaders.

Where GPU Time Is Spent

Hardline has three primary GPU cost centers.

1. Per-Material Shading (Main Cost)

Every Hardline material evaluates:

  • Color ramps
  • Screen-space directional shadow
  • Environment light blending
  • Optional additional-light masks

This happens per visible pixel.

This is:

  • More expensive than URP Unlit
  • Much cheaper than URP Lit

Because there are no real lights, no reflection probes, and no BRDFs.

Performance scales with:

  • Number of visible objects
  • Screen resolution
  • Material complexity

SRP batching ensures this cost is amortized efficiently across large numbers of meshes.

2. Outline Pass (Screen-Space)

Outlines are rendered using a full-screen post-process pass based on depth and normals.

This cost scales with:

  • Screen resolution
  • Outline thickness
  • Noise and edge complexity

Outlines are the largest global performance lever in Hardline.

Disabling outlines provides the biggest single performance improvement.

3. Skybox Pass (Constant Cost)

The Hardline skybox is rendered using a single full-screen pass.

It uses:

  • Deterministic band math
  • Deterministic procedural stars

Star density, scale, and band settings do not change shader cost.
They only change constants in math.

Skybox cost is:

Constant per frame

Lights Are Not Lights

Unity lights do not behave as real light sources in Hardline.

They are used only as:

  • Shadow occlusion masks
  • Environment absorption volumes

Each light contributes only:

  • Position
  • Radius

The shader evaluates a light by checking:

distance² < radius²

This produces a mask that modulates:

  • Shadow strength
  • Environment influence

Lights do not:

  • Emit illumination
  • Cast shadows
  • Run lighting equations

Additional Light Limit

Hardline supports:

StyleControllerEnvironment.MaxAdditionalLights = 8

This is a hard limit.

These lights are selected based on distance to Camera.main and uploaded to shaders as simple position/radius data.

Performance impact:

  • CPU: selecting closest lights
  • GPU: up to 8 distance checks per pixel

This is extremely cheap compared to real lighting.

The limit exists to keep shader cost bounded and predictable.

What Scales and What Does Not

Scales with:

  • Screen resolution
  • Number of visible objects
  • Outline enabled
  • Outline thickness and noise
  • Shadow clip sharpness

Barely scales with:

  • Number of lights (hard-capped at 8)
  • Skybox complexity
  • Preset blending
  • API calls

Hardline’s cost is dominated by pixels, not lights.

Material-Level Control

Every Hardline material exposes:

  • Environment_Light_Influence
  • Environment_Shadow_Influence

These allow you to reduce or remove global lighting on:

  • FX
  • UI meshes
  • Emissive objects
  • Characters
  • Particles

This is a powerful performance and readability tool.

Objects that do not need lighting should opt out.

CPU Cost

CPU work in Hardline is limited to:

  • Selecting the closest lights
  • Uploading shader globals
  • Preset blending (if used)

There is:

  • No per-renderer light assignment
  • No per-object lighting lists
  • No culling-based lighting rebuilds

This keeps CPU overhead low and stable.

Mobile and Low-End Hardware

Hardline is compatible with mobile platforms and low-end GPUs, and has been tested on some newer mobile hardware but it requires:

  • Depth textures
  • Screen-space shadow sampling

Some older mobile GPUs either:

  • Do not support depth textures correctly, or
  • Have very limited depth bandwidth

Even if the URP Render Asset allows depth textures, the hardware may not be able to provide them at usable performance.

On low-power mobile devices:

  • Reduce resolution
  • Disable or soften outlines
  • Use lower shadow clip values
  • Reduce visible geometry

Depth usage is the primary limiting factor on low-end hardware.

Performance Positioning

Hardline trades real lighting for stylized, controlled shading.

Compared to standard URP:

PipelineRelative Cost
URP UnlitCheapest
HardlineMedium
URP LitMost expensive

Hardline provides dynamic directional shadows and environment lighting without paying the cost of real point-lights.

Summary

Hardline performance is driven by:

  • Screen resolution
  • Visible pixel count
  • Outline complexity

Not by:

  • Number of lights
  • Light types
  • Reflection probes
  • BRDFs

This makes the system predictable, scalable, and suitable for large stylized scenes.