How does the Anisotropic Textures Quality Setting affect each texture's Aniso Level?

 

• I do not understand how the Anisotropic Textures field in Quality Settings affects the Aniso Level for each of my textures.
• The anisotropic filtering for my textures is not what I expected.

Cause

The Anisotropic Textures field in Quality Settings has the options Disabled, Per Texture and Forced On. It can be confusing how this relates to the Aniso Level exposed in the Texture Importer for each texture.

 

In the Texture Importer, an Aniso Level of either 0 or 1 means disabled; higher values represent different levels of Anisotropic filtering.

The setting in Quality Settings (Anisotropic Textures) can be Disabled, Per Texture or Forced On. This is where Aniso Level 0 and 1 differ; 0 means always disabled and 1 (and higher values) can be overridden by the setting in Quality Settings. Forced On clamps the Aniso Level between 9 and 16 (unless a texture has Aniso Level set to 0, in which case it stays disabled for that texture).