3D rendering in Unity uses Meshes, Materials, Shaders and Textures. These assets have a close relationship, and are often encapsulated in a single model.
A material contains properties and textures, and shaders dictate what properties and textures a material can have.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Model | A package containing the mesh, materials, shaders, textures, and optionally, animations and skeleton (animation rig) for a 3D character or object. |
| Mesh | The main graphics primitive of Unity that defines the shape of an object. |
| Mesh Renderer | The component that displays the geometry and material of a 3D game object. |
| Material | Defines how a surface should be rendered. Using options defined in the shader, referenced textures and their tiling settings, and lighting in the scene, a material controls what the surface looks like, including its color tint and how shiny or smooth it appears. |
| Shader | Small scripts that contain mathematical calculations and algorithms for calculating the color of each pixel rendered, based on the lighting and the material configuration. |
| Texture | Any bitmap image in Unity that, when placed on a Material and attached to a 3D object. Represent what is on a material’s surface. |
- Unity Manual and Unity Scripting Reference
- Chapter 2 in Hocking, Joseph. Unity in Action: Multiplatform Game Development in C # (2nd Edition). Manning, 2018.
- Working with Models, Materials, and Textures in Unity Game Development