Performance Tips

If a Genesis material is slow, it is almost always one of three things: too many texture samples, too many shader variants, or batching broken by a script. This page walks the optimization process the way a perf engineer would.

As a reference, a heavy material (Lit + Cel Ramp + Rim + MatCap + Triplanar + Stochastic + Outline + Dissolve) can cost around 6.2ms/frame on an Adreno 730. Trimmed to Toon + Cel Single + Outline, the same gameplay-distance read drops to roughly 1.8ms — a 3x reduction with no visible difference at distance.

The optimization process

Profile first. Open the Unity Profiler. Identify the slowest material.
Check sample count — Frame Debugger shows the fragment instruction count and sampler bindings.
Disable one feature at a time. Cut everything you cannot prove is needed at gameplay distance.
Audit variants. Tools > Genesis > Shader Tools Window > Variant Audit.
Confirm batching survives in the Frame Debugger.

Cost reference

Inspector label	Shader property	Type	Default	Description
Albedo + Normal	_BaseMap / _BumpMap	2 samples	—	Keep. Required for almost any material.
Cel Shading (any mode)	_CEL_SHADING_ON	+0 to +1 samples	—	Mobile-safe. The signature look at minimal cost.
Rim Lighting	_RIM_ON	+8 ALU	—	No samples. Universal.
MatCap	_MATCAP_ON	+1 sample	—	Cheaper than reflection probes; mobile-safe at 256x256.
Triplanar	_TRIPLANAR_ON	x3 samples	—	Avoid on mobile. Limit to hero surfaces.
Stochastic Triplanar	_STOCHASTIC_ON	x9 samples	—	Hides tiling at heavy cost. Skip on mobile / WebGL.
Inverted-Hull Outline	_OUTLINE_ON	2x vertex pass	—	Fragment cost zero. Mobile-OK.
Screen-Space Outline Module	Renderer feature	Full-screen pass	—	Cinematic look. Reduce render scale on mobile.
Dissolve	_DISSOLVE_ON	+1 sample + clip	—	Cheap when noise is small.
Hologram	_HOLOGRAM_ON	+5-10 ALU	—	Mobile-safe at moderate scan density.
PCSS Shadow Module	Renderer feature	Compute filter	—	Heavy. Desktop / console only — skip on mobile.

Tactical wins

Use Single-band cel when you can. Stepped(3) and Ramp look great, but Single is the cheapest tier.
Bake AO instead of running real-time AO. Use the AO Baker tool.
Share materials. Two materials with the same keyword set = batched. Diverging materials = separate draw calls.
Disable Receive Shadows on FX, holograms, and Unlit FX meshes.
Drop texture resolution on distant props. 512 instead of 1024 is invisible at 10m+.
Avoid Stochastic on mobile. Use plain triplanar plus a low-frequency detail map.

Mobile target frame budget: a single Genesis material should cost under 1.5ms per fragment shader invocation in the worst case. If you exceed this, audit samples and variants.

Per-instance keyword toggles via EnableKeyword instantiate the material and double draw calls. Pre-create material variants instead.

Build size

Variant count drives build size. A typical project ships 20–50 unique variants. If Tools > Genesis > Shader Tools Window > Variant Audit reports more than 200, your Feature Configurator profile is too permissive — tighten it.