Is it ok to use switches in parent shader?

My parent shader has about 8 switches now, which i toggle in instance materials as i need,
but how good it is for performance reasons? is there some crucial downside?

when you use a switch the material internally creates another version of itself, so in fact it’s as if you had 2 materials instead of using an instance of the same one.
this ramps up exponentially as you add more switches, by a factor of 2ⁿ where n is the amount of switches you have.
1 switch means 2 materials, 2 switches means 4 materials, 3 switches means 8 materials, and so on. in your case 8 switches means up to 256 different materials

it all comes down to how many materials you use in the end. a material with 3 switches for 100 instances seems perfectly ok, while a material with 8 switches for 100 instances defeats the purpose of using instances

Thank you.

And if i use Lerps instead?

Linear Interpolation is like the best thing ever for blending mats and alpha and stuff. Here, someone did a great job of showing how it’s done briefly and I’ll just link that instead of reinventing the wheel. Let me know if you have questions on it though.

Ok thank you i know what lerp is, that is not the question.

Question is:
i had 8 switches, asked if they are good for performance and in general, andswer is no,
so my next question is if i substitute switches with lerps, how big of performance impact that is and are there some major drawbacks to it.