what exactly does the stats Tris/Verts counter actually count?

[floral fulcrum]

more context here > #💻┃unity-talk message

[cobalt mauve]

for the shadows question

for a light to have shadows

it renders a depth texture from the shadows perspective

then does some funky math

so in the main render pass it gets the depth buffer drawn and samples positions and if they're further on one or something itll be in shadow

and then it uses bias and blends it

so it has to render everything twice even though its only depth

and it wouldnt do that for transparent items i dont think so thats why making something transparent is lower than opaque on the vert count

[floral fulcrum]

o, interesting so the counter includes different passes like lighting too. originally i assumed it was just how many vertices and triangles were currently being rendered, based on the meshes within the cameras bounding box.
high tri/vert count definitely make more sense when taking lighting passes into account

[cobalt mauve]

well they're still being rendered

it has to draw all of it again

but it does it with only a depth buffer and you never directly see that so its much faster relative to doing the normal pass

[floral fulcrum]

ohh kk, so it's not all passes, just depth.