Question ¨Why are Mesh Renderers set to multiple layers by default?

When creating a cube in a scene, it has two layers in the rendering layer mask assigned by default (0efault, 8 when light layers is enabled.

Why is this? And is it possible to change this so that it only ends up in 0:efault layer by default?

Also; does it have any performance impact that it is in two rendering layers instead of one?

Any educated feedback is hightly appreciated!

 

If you don't need light layers in your project you can disable them in your project settings or for the specific camera if you only need it sometimes.

Light layers helps you define lighting from inside and outside sources, as well as lighting conditions for cinematic, since you won't want to be turning them on or off.

Light layers will help you with a sort of culling mask control to prevent bleeding and organise multiple light use types within a given scene.

You can check a little more out here.

Performance wise, in anything, you would see a performance increase using it rather than not. But it's ultimately scene dependant.

Light layers also currently doesn't work with the New terrain details instancing options unity has introduced in Tech stream, but that's likely just a bug rather than a limitation.