compiling shader variants takes forever when building for Android

Hello guys,

I have spent several days googling and reading about this problem and I couldn't find any definitive answer to this problem.

When I build my project to test it in my Android phone, the compiling shader variants takes a lonnngggg time. Mainly in "standard (specular setup).

Is anyone else here have had the same problem and if so, has anyone found a clear and real solution for this?

Regards,
Carlos

 

I used to find this before 2018, now I don't know where to find the settings where I can select the apis I want to use to remove the other ones. So I don't know now if there are some apis enabled that I don't need.

Regards,
Carlos

 

Got it. I only have Vulkan and openGLES3 enabled.

 

When I use Standard shader(specular) build thousands of those. I have 13 scenes in my game, and I had to disable the last 7 scenes from the build in order to spend less time since I am only testing, and despite this it took around 40 to 45 minutes compiling shaders. I only use that standard specular shader and a couple of other, which compile very fast and very small amount of variants.

 

What do you mean with having a lot of shader features? I use the diffuse and normal map slots only. Is there a way to remove features that don't have texture slots from the standard specular shader?

 

I am actually experiencing this same issue..... I use only standard shaders, no fog, no light maps, one single light-source. Are you speaking about how many actual standard shaders ("variants") we are using?

 

368 this is overkill as hell as I have maybe 12 in the scene...... is this really just due to selecting multiple API tiers? >.>

 

I know for certain that this didn't happened before I started using Unity 2018 and I was using then the same amount of materials and all the other usual stuff, or even more.

 

Here I have a couple of screenshots, the first one demostrates that the Standard Specular shader is only being compiled for Android, the seconds shows the usage of the shader in the material. And only one character is using this material

 

I agree with @strongbox3d Before Unity 2018 the shader variant compilation build time was at least 90% faster then the current build time. This is also becoming a serious issue in our company! For the same project with target windows (mono) i'm compiling shaders for 20 minutes per build, while in previous versions of Unity this was like 1 or 2 minutes!
@aleksandrk Can you please elaborate ways to decrease this or the reason why Unity does this? It seems like a MAJOR regression in build time!

 

I wonder why I didn't get any other answer from the Unity folks in relation to this issue. I believe that this issue is "kind" of important and unacceptable when trying to test the game in the target platform.

Regards,
Carlos

 

Indeed, this issue is effecting production workflow so much, in bad way. There suppose to be a solution a selection, because it wasnt like that before 2018.1. I know there are major render pipeline changes in that version but, there suppose to be a way, at least the sake of quick testing and there are situations that you cant use unity remote for testing so an actual build will be necessary in that kind of situations. Dear Unity team, please find a way to shorten or remove that "dead block" of time.

 

I get the explanation why unity does this variant compilation. But still I don't get it why it takes AGES since Unity 2018.x for the same project that took 30 seconds in Unity 2017.x?? To me whatever the explanation is, this should be fixed, because build time is currently unacceptable!
Might it be part of the solution to actually expose the usage of shader keywords and the impact this has on shader variant compilation to the user? Unity is literally compiling 100.000+ shader variants for just using the "standard shader" In our world! I'm very willing to understand why this happens!?

 

I didn't and don't load scenes additively, so that is not a reason for my project at all.

 

Hi all, same happening here... Whats wrong with Unity!? My scenes are clean and I have only one shader in my project file. I have 8 scenes with spherical cubemaps but it exports 8 sharedasset shaders... Then the export ends up at 30GB wth.

Any luck anybody ?

 

My tiers settings are:

1 and 2: Default.

The problem became so bad, that I switched the use of standard shader to legacy shaders/diffuse only and even doing this, compiling takes at least 15 minutes.

3: See screenshot:

 

Hello, any updates on this?? It is a major issue for me...

Reproduction Steps:
Create a simple project with Lightweight RP for VR
Set the build target to Android (Gradle)
Open sample scene (one with the DIY equipment)
Build takes forever....
THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of shader variants being built...

Unity 2018.2.6f1

Edit: ok maybe not forever, but much longer than a small scene like this should I think (maybe 30min). On a more complex scene, like those from ArchVizPRO Interior Vol. 3 and it will take forever.

 

I know I said 30min before, because that's what it looked like as the build was finalizing when I made that statement. Turns out it is longer than that, it actually never finished it because I just force quit unity after 1 hour of Unity trying to finalize the build.

Well my apologies, let me rephrase it...
On a more complex scene, which in a lot of cases uses more materials and variants, like those from ArchVizPRO Interior Vol. 3 it will take forever.

Something must be wrong, please find out what it is and fix it.

 

Can anyone please post the bug report here, this is one I want to keep my eyes on!

 

I have reduced the compile time a lot with low quality shadows. But it must be fixed, for 4 materials compile tens of thousands of shader variants...

 

Updated! After tons of shaders variants, the build do not have textures... bravo!

 

Any solution for that? I've also encountered this issue and there is like thousands of shader variants (also mainly standard (specular setup)) during build.

 

how is this still not fixed yet?!

 

To report a bug you need the editor, and you know what? The editor has been hooked up by the shader compiler variants for the past 1h and a half. Now I am reporting a bug for this issue, even we all know this is not a bug strictly speaking. In the mean time, since it is taking its time to build the package for the report let me make a simple consideration.

This has been reported here since August 5th, it has to count somehow. Otherwise, if every time we come here to seek for help what we get is "report a bug", close the support forum and put a big text on the first page:

"Report a bug, because on our computers it works!"​

So, instead of procrastinating, avoiding to tackle this issue, why don't you open any recent 2018.1.2+ Unity, create a new project with Lightweight Pipeline VR, for Android, Report a bug yourself at this point, and then BUILD?.

Create a simple project with Lightweight RP for VR
Set the build target to Android (Gradle)
Open the example scene (one with the DIY equipment)
Build takes forever....
THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of shader variants being built...
Unity 2018.2.6f1

We are not talking about big projects, we are talking about the first example scene to test the LWRP for VR ¬_¬.

Oh, since we are here? Even you can't reduce the number of variants the first time you build, can't you, at least, figure out what actually has changed since last time and filter out those variants that don't need to be recreated?

Thanks,
Fabio

 

@aleksandrk Well, at least one bug has been reported now by me. As far as I know, it happens by simply start a new project as described above (LWRP VR Android), that's why reporting a bug sounded overkilling, but it was not reproducible on your side, which apparently is the case. Also, I didn't know Unity employees were not ment to participate in the conversation.

Anyway, here is the bug report https://fogbugz.unity3d.com/default.asp?1099293_2p70l1noer6l9ini

 

Hey same issue here, I've opened the issue 1090892.

 

Same issue here... I hope someone comes with a solution.

 

Hey, I switched back to the legacy forward renderer and compilation time as decreased a lot. It's not exactly what I would like but I can work again on my project so it's fine for now.

 

We upgrade our code from 2017 to 2018. compiling shader variants takes too much time during the build and we can not test our built version. we have 52 scenarios into code. I can not build all of them but I try to build twscenariosio. they take around half an hour. we can not continue like this. this is a very big bug. Unity team should be found solution or workaround this.

 

Same issue here. Simply trying to execute the LWRP VR template on Oculus Go.

Very first build takes ages (40 mins).
Next builds takes a long long time (15 mins).

Windows
Unity 2018.3.0b12
Android + VR

Please vote here guys:
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...render-pipeline-slash-lit-shader-is-compiling

 

This hasn't been fixed yet? It's taking me 6+ hours to compile my game? This makes no sense that when I make one code change, and I have to wait a day to build and test it.

I upgraded my project from 2017 to 2018 what a mistake. At this rate it will take forever to finish my game! :-(

John

 

Hi,

When I do a code change (script) not shader script. It seems that the it just recompiles the shaders every time I rebuild my game. I haven't changed or added any new shaders in months. However, I did check the ShaderCache folder in my library folder of my project, and It looks like it just keeps rebuilding each shader each time (date) I rebuild my game. I deleted the folder it was over 10gb in size. I'm not sure if this normal.

Thanks,

John

 

I'm currently working on a project with Unity 2018.3 and LWRP 4.6.0 (targeting mobile VR) and I wanted to share my experience.

• The very first time I build (or when I clear the Library folder), building takes a long time (~45 mins).
  
• Modifying any LWRP setting would recompile all Shaders (~45 mins)
• Modifying any Shader takes less time (as far as I understand, because only the modified Shaders get recompiled)
• Modifying scripts does not increase build time (@John-Lisenby)
• But building without changing anything still takes MUCH longer than using Legacy. In my opinion, that is a major drawback using LWRP. I'd be curious to know why that happens and if you guys are planning to improve this in 2019.x

Your feedback is much appreciated @aleksandrk