Shaders vs Materials

Hey everyone, I wanted some easy clarification on what the difference between a shader and a material is. I believe from what I have read on the documentation, a material is the actual pixels on an object and a shader is a small script that determines how those pixels react to the light. Are shaders just automatically run in Unity whenever you drag a material on an object?

 

Materials have the settings called "shader", so if you choose a material, you choose a shader. You can find it right on the top, under the name of the material.



Material is a bunch of parameters (colors, numbers, images and maps /which are also images/) together. Shader is the piece of code which applies these parameters on the thing you render on a way which is usually predetermined.

 

Cool, so I noticed there are some other options you can choose for shaders in the properties window. What do those mean, does it just render the material differently?

 

@MoistDumpling14, your definition is actually pretty close.

The material isn't what determines how the mesh's surface will look like; the shader is what does it.

A material is just something that holds a shader, like an encapsulator. The shader's public variables are shown as parameters on the material.

To apply a shader to a mesh, you must put it in a material and apply that material to the mesh, is all.