Render Modes Explained
Genesis exposes three top-level Rendering Modes: Lit, Unlit, and Toon. They are not just presets — each enables a different lighting pipeline, with different default keywords and a different shader pass set. Picking the right one upfront saves you from fighting the inspector later.
Lit (PBR)
Genesis’s Lit mode is a stylized take on standard PBR. You get NdotL diffuse, GGX specular, image-based reflections, shadows, and all the Genesis stylization knobs on top. Use it when you want physical light response but with custom controls.
Use for: heroes, props, environments that need to read as physical materials. Cost: highest. Roughly comparable to URP/Lit plus the features you enable.
Unlit
Unlit drops lighting entirely. Albedo, emission, and effect overlays only. The mesh self-illuminates and ignores the scene lights.
Use for: UI in world space, gameplay FX, flat-shaded mobile foliage, stylized skies. Cost: lowest. No NdotL, no shadow sampling, minimal math.
Toon
Toon is the stylized middle ground. You get directional lighting and shadow casting, but the diffuse channel is quantized through cel shading by default. The toon stack (cel + rim + outline) is enabled out of the box.
The same material in Lit mode versus Toon mode. Drag to compare.
Use for: anime / cartoon characters, stylized props, UI in world. Cost: between Lit and Unlit. Cel and rim are cheap; outline doubles vertex cost.
Choosing a mode
You can switch modes on a finished material without losing your texture assignments — Genesis preserves slots across mode changes.
Switching from Toon to Unlit silently disables cel shading and rim. If you want to keep stylization but flatten lighting, stay in Toon and just disable Receive Shadows.