@pi55d@yourwalls.today if it was discarded it would be fine, but doing branches in shaders is even more expensive I think so instead it blends a transparent pixel with what's already drawn, which still takes draw time. That's my understanding of it. It's not a memory thing, the texture will take the same amount of space regardless. It's the mesh that it gets drawn over that is different. Even if the game is 2D the actual graphical API is still 3D and draws 3D meshes with textures over them which unity will generate for you and you can see them in the wireframe.