Feedback Wanted: Scriptable Render Pipelines

Hi Deano,

>Performance and quality is pretty good on both PC and XB1, however there are places its lacking.

Currently XB1 one have poor performance (there is a big gap between PS4 and XBone with HDRP) due to almost no existent ESRAM management, so good to heard it already fit your performance requirement, it can only become better.

>to have the functionality available on a material

We have discuss this a lot. Almost every projects (including internal demo of Unity) develop their own tools for that. Sadly we lack resources and time to develop a robust general tools for Unity.

>I'd be happy with just the features unity currently supports

What features are you referring to?
Terrain / Particles / VR or you refer to something else ?

>accept maintaining a custom renderer based on current SRP:HD
>So my current thinking is that it would be possible to ship with it,

This really depends on your context and your shipping date. If it is mid-2019, then it may be acceptable with a graphic programmer support. HDRP still experimental because it is not production ready

Maybe this can help you or not, but I will post just below current state of HDRP for 2018.1 and 2018.2

 

Here is the current state of HDRP:

2018.1 features / functionality
General

• 
  Platform support: DX11, DX12, PS4, XBoxOne, Metal, Vulkan
  
  
• HD don’t use Resources folder mechanism but rely on a RenderPipelineResources Asset that reference all orphan shader and compute shaders
  
  
  • Pros: Users don’t need to add mandatory shaders to always include shaders
    
    
  • Cons: Not using Resource folder is problematic as asset referenced in RenderPipelineResources suffer from another issue related to asset pipeline and meta that cause random link break when we upgrade them. Problem appear with Postprocess stack also.
    
    
  • Not extensible by the users, even more painful with package manager
    
• Constant buffer at Frame, Camera and RenderPass frequency are setup from C#
  
  
  • Done for camera except for Shadow matrix
    
    
  • ConstantBuffer arrangement compatible with the new batcher from Arnaud Carre ("UnityPerMaterial" and "UnityPerDraw”)
    
    
  • TAA jittering matrix handled by HDRP, VR camera retrive with C# API and sent to the shader
    
• Camera relative rendering (to have better precision)
  
  
• RenderPipeline Asset control supported features of HD (shadowMask, VR, etc…)
  
  
  • This allow to definitely remove memory allocation or shader variant
    
• FrameSetting by camera. FrameSettings allow to define which rendering features are enabled for this camera (shadow, sky/fog, sss, opaque, transparent, postprocess…)
  
  
• Scene settings control via generic volume settings hierarchy (similar to postprocess)
  
  
  • This handle settings like sky, cascade shadow, fog
    
• RenderTarget management via RTHandle
  
  
  • No use of GetTemporaryRT() call that cause a lot of trouble with multiple camera and a lot of reallocation. Target are allocated via RenderTexture and based on percentage of screensize (except texture like shadow).
    

Debug

• Generic Debug windows that can handle any debug command / control. This windows is available both in editor and at runtime.
  
  
  • FrameSettings per camera control (Override current FrameSettings of the camera)
    
    
  • Material debug mode
    
    
    • Display any properties of a given master shader either deferred or forward
      
  • Lighting debug mode
    
    
    • Can display diffuse lighting only, specular lighting only, shadow map, sky cubemap, lux meter
      
      
    • Can display shadow of selected light in editor
      
  • Property override mode
    
    
    • Override albedo, diffuse, normal
      
  • Mipmap and streaming debug mode
    
    
    • Only based on baseColor of Lit.shader
      
  • Property debug mode
    
    
    • Display mesh with a given property like POM or Tessellation
      
  • Intermediate buffer
    
    
    • Can display intermediate AO buffer, motion vectors
      
  • Color picker debug mode
    
    
    • Allow to pick a pixel of current HDR buffer or any debug mode enabled and display its value
      
  • Nan checker
    
    
  • Light tile / Cluster / material classification debug mode
    

Lighting

• New light type / Features
  
  
  • HD Custom light editor
    
    
  • Inner angle control for SpotLight
    
    
  • SpotLight shape: Cone, Box (Box is what people call local directional) and Pyramid Projector
    
    
    • Box don’t support orthogonal shadow for now
      
      
    • Pyramid projector don’t use a correct shadow (Use cone settings one)
      
      
    • Pyramid support perspective shadow
      
      
    • Pyramid and box have no edge attenuation, this is control by the cookie
      
  • Color temperature
    
    
  • Colored cookie textures on directional, point and spot lights
    
    
    • Repeat and clamp mode for directional
      
      
    • Clamp to black only for spot
      
      
    • Animated cookie supported with CustomTexture
      
  • No attenuation option (For indoor), Dimmer option (to turn on/off smoothly light by script), Fade distance option (Smoothly fadeout with distance)
    
    
  • Affect Diffuse / Affect specular option (Don’t save any cost)
    
    
  • HD Reflection probe editor
    
    
  • Reflection probes with improvement
    
    
    • Support OBB and sphere shape
      
      
    • Separate influence volume and proxy volume (Only API Side, not UI)
      
      
    • Various fading option: per face fade distance, per face fade, normal oriented based fade, weight dimmer
      
      
    • Intensity multiplier
      
      
    • Realtime reflection probes supported
      
      
    • Reflection probe convolution done on GPU at runtime
      
      
      • No need for “Specular (Glossy Reflection)” option for custom cubemap (Save import time)
        
        
      • Allow different texture resolution for different platform (Platform just use regular mipmap required then convolve)
        
        
      • CPU convolution still enable but is useless (need to disable it)
        
        
      • For real time cubemap: GPU built-in unity convolution still execute in addition to HD correct convolution.
        
    • GPU convolution that we do is fast and use importance sampling, it is not a good fit for HDRI with a Sun (Sun should be analytic), it generate noise.
      
  • Realtime Planar reflection probes
    
    
    • Handled exactly like reflection probe (except it is a plane)
      
      
    • Only mirror (No glossy reflection)
      
  • Rectangular area light (no shadow, no GI) - high cost
    
    
  • Line light (no shadow, no GI) - high cost
    
    
  • Physical light unit (Lumen for punctual light and area, Lux at ground level for Directional)
    
    
  • Built-In area lights are not supported (replace by Rectangle light). However in 2018.1 Rectangle Light don’t support baking, so there is no equivalent
    

• Shadows:
  
  
  • HD additional shadow data editor
    
    
    • Shadow dimmer
      
      
    • Shadow resolution
      
  • ShadowMask and ShadowMask Distance feature of built-in Unity supported
    
    
  • Deferred shadow for deferred and forward opaque (for GPU performance)
    
    
  • Screen space contact shadow for directional light only - control on volume settings - high cost (not polished)
    
    
  • Cascade shadow map distance control on volume settings
    
    
  • Support various filtering algorithm: MSM, VSM, EVSM, PCF, TentPCF
    
    
    • Shadow atlas
      
      
    • Default to TentPCF
      
      
    • Control is done via code
      
  • Various shadow bias control
    
    
    • View bias
      
      
    • Normal bias
      
      
      • Use normal map. For directional light only in deferred.
        
    • Edge leak fix
      
      
    • Sample bias (disable by default, expensive)
      

• Lighting architecture
  
  
  • Prepass option
    
    
    • Prepass always perform for forward opaque/opaque alpha tested and deferred opaque alpha tested. Then during regular rendering (Forward or deferred), the alpha testing is not perform and it use depth equal z test (Performance reason).
      
      
    • Optional full prepass in deferred (i.e render opaque non alpha tested as well)
      
  • Tile rendering for deferred
    
    
    • Lighting and emissive stored together in emissive buffer (RT3)
      
  • Tile or cluster rendering for forward opaque, transparent always cluster. If MSAA always cluster
    
    
    • Current limit is 24 light per tile (could be change to 31 with few effort)
      
  • Tile/Cluster use TextureArray
    
    
    • Cookie, CubeCookie, ReflectionProbe, PlanarReflection have fixed size
      
      
    • Realtime version version are part of the TextureArray with same size restriction
      
      
    • None of this texture are compressed (Compressing texture in editor currently don’t change that - uncompressed in TextureArray)
      
  • Light classification for deferred case
    
    
  • Reflection and refraction hierarchy
    
    
    • Screen space refraction (not working with sky background), no screen space reflection
      
      
    • Fallback on reflection probe (Reuse same probe for Refraction)
      
      
    • Fallback on sky
      
  • Feature parity between deferred and forward renderer (Decals, SSSSS)
    
    
    • Except for shadow bias normal with deferred directional light
      

• Sky
  
  
  • Realtime GPU cubemap convolution (See Reflection Probe)
    
    
  • Sky settings control by volume settings
    
    
  • Sky manager allowing to have different sky type
    
    
    • Optional separate sky settings for baking (Ambient probe + Lightmaps)
      
      
    • Optional lighting override (lighting different from visual)
      
      
    • Designed with dynamic time of day in mind
      
      
      • Sky is rendered into a cubemap when changed and then a convolution is done on GPU. Then sky is render normally in background.
        
        
      • Currently cubemap setup in a sky material for built-in Unity system
        
        
      • Time of day not implemented
        
  • HDRI sky
    
    
  • Procedural sky (Same as built-in Unity)
    
    
  • Fog/Atmospheric scattering: Linear or Exponential
    
    
    • Support height based fog
      
      
    • Fog can be tint by sky color (Use mips from the sky cubemap)
      
      
    • Apply to both opaque and transparent
      

• SS Ambient Occlusion (From stack V2: MSVO)
  
  
  • SSAO is apply during lighting pass on lighting buffer (which include GI * albedo * AO + emissive, mean double occlusion and AO on emissive that are barely visible)
    
    
  • SSAO can be apply on direct lighting with a percentage factor
    
    
  • Work in both forward and deferred (Depth only)
    
    
  • Use multibounce approximation formula from Jimenez
    

• SS Specular occlusion
  
  
  • Use Tri-ace trick on top of SSAO
    
    
  • Min with specular occlusion from material (no double occlusion)
    

• Global illumination
  
  
  • Hack to support alpha map and transmissive for PVR (Custom transmissive map should be supported if user add it)
    
    
  • Inverse square attenuation (with smooth attenuation) for progressive lightmapper
    
    
  • Enlighten don’t support inverse square attenuation
    

Material

• Material architecture
  
  
  • Material classification for deferred case
    
    
  • 4 GBuffer (3 for material, one for lighting) in deferred + 1 for shadow mask
    

• Lit
  
  
  • Opaque/Transparent
    
    
    • Blend mode for transparent: Alpha, Add, Premultiplied alpha
      
      
    • Compatible with Fog
      
      
    • Blend mode specular lighting: better handling of specular lighting with transparent blend mode
      
  • Support receive decal
    
    
  • Motion vector for vertex animation (with shader graph)
    
    
  • Transparent Queue priority allowing to force sorting order of transparent
    
    
  • Two sided lighting: None, Flip, Mirror
    
    
  • Object space (OS) and tangent space (TS) normal map
    
    
  • Parallax occlusion mapping (POM)
    
    
    • Can adapt to object scale and tiling
      
  • Vertex displacement map (Can be apply with or without tessellation)
    
    
    • Can adapt to object scale and tiling
      
  • Tessellation (Phong)
    
    
  • Disney parametrization (Metal/BaseColor) or Specular/Color parametrization
    
    
  • Detail map (Smoothness, Albedo, normal)
    
    
    • Tiling of detail map can inherit from tiling of base
      
  • Surface gradient framework (allows to have correct tangent basis for UV sets other than 0). Normal mapping in tangent space rely on a tangent basis that is calculated from the UV set. In Unity, tangent basis is only available for UV0, it means that if other UV sets are used for normal map (like it is often the case for detail normal map), it is incorrect. Surface gradient framework allows to generate a tangent basis on the fly for UV sets other than UV0 and have correct normal mapping result.
    
    
  • UV0-UV3 mapping, Planar and Triplanar mapping (compatible with POM and normal map OS or TS)
    
    
    • UV1 still reserved by static lightmap (Built-in behavior)
      
      
    • UV2 still reserved by dynamic lightmap (Built-in behavior)
      
      
    • Precision on static batching issue wrt Lightmap UVs. When static batching happens, *lightmap* UV transformation is applied directly inside the batched mesh on the UVs and not in the shader anymore so it means that it's applied for everything that uses these particular UVs
      
  • Bent normal support and use to fetch lightmap/light probe (provides better result than using normal map)
    
    
  • Specular occlusion with BentNormal (bad quality)
    
    
  • Emissive color/mask that can be affected by albedo or not
    
    
  • Standard BRDF
    
    
    • Isotropic GGX for specular with multi scattering support for specular
      
      
    • Burley Disney for diffuse
      
  • Various BRDF features (Add on top or replace part of standard)
    
    
    • Anisotropy
      
      
      • Anisotropic GGX with multi scattering support for specular
        
        
      • Parameters goes from -1 to 1 to support along tangent and along bitangent anisotropy
        
    • Subsurface scattering
      
      
      • Normalized Burley diffusion (Disney) subsurface scattering
        
        
      • Control via a diffusion profile (Diffusion Profile asset)
        
        
      • SSS Mask
        
        
      • Optional transmission
        
        
        • Thickness map for transmittance
          
          
        • Transmittance handle shadow for thin object
          
          
        • Hack to support shadow for thick object
          
    • Iridescence
      
      
      • Replace fresnel of specular
        
        
      • Iridescence Mask
        
        
      • Iridescence Thickness map
        
    • Translucent
      
      
      • Transmission Only (See Subsurface scattering)
        
    • Clear coat
      
      
      • Clear coat Mask
        
        
      • Fixed smoothness, reuse normal map of standard
        
  • Rough refraction option for transparent material
    
    
    • Support 2 mode (plane and sphere) with thickness
      
      
    • Absorption
      
      
    • Index or refraction
      
      
    • Transparent can be render before rough refraction pass (but then break the sorting) to be visible in rough refraction
      
  • Distortion (Distortion is based on distortion vector and target artistic effect unlike rough refraction which is physical)
    
    
  • GI
    
    
    • Linked Two sided lighting with Double Sided global Illumination
      
      
    • Meta pass is correctly handled for vertex color and UVs and support planar and triplanar
      
  • Transparent only sorting help
    
    
    • Material can define relative priority (either pre refraction or not)
      
      
    • (not expose) Support for a depth prepass for transparent object (to help with sorting issue)
      
      
    • Support of back face then front face rendering for improve sorting issues
      
      
    • Support of depth post pass to solve issue with Postprocess (DOF/MB)
      
  • Support instancing
    

• Layered Lit
  
  
  • Two to Four Layers
    
    
    • Layer is a Lit material that only support material type: Standard, Subsurface scattering, Translucent)
      
      
      • Transparent may not behave correctly
        
        
      • Flipped normal with two sided lighting may not work correctly with multiple layer and surface gradient framework with UV1-3.
        
        
      • Parallax occlusion mapping (POM) does not work currently with multiple layers
        
  • Blending based on
    
    
    • Blend mask
      
      
      • Separate UV mapping and tiling
        
    • Vertex color (two mode: additive, multiplicative)
      
      
    • Heightmap (optional)
      
  • Optional influence mode of Main layer
    
    
    • Influence mask layer for fine control
      
      
    • Current baseColor, normal and heightmap Layer can be modified (influenced) by the Main layer
      
  • Optional density mode
    
    
    • Alpha in diffuse controls a threshold to make layers appear (Giving the illusion that we control the density of a particular material, like small pines)
      
  • 2 buttons to be able to synchronize properties of a given material on a given layer
    
    
    • One to synchronize all properties
      
      
    • One to synchronize all properties but UV mapping and tiling
      

• Decal
  
  
  • Decal Projector
    
    
    • DBuffer approach for deferred and forward opaque
      
      
    • Cluster decal for transparent (Crash on PS4)
      
      
    • Support BaseColor, Normal, Smoothness (Single blend value)
      
      
    • Still unstable
      

Camera/Postprocess

• Support Postprocess stack V2 support except SSR
  
  
• Motion vector: Support of skinned motion vector and add concept of MotionVectors pass
  

2018.2 features / functionality
General

• Support history buffer per Camera (History buffer are keep frame to frame, use for temporal accumulation and SSR)
  
  
• Every constant buffer setup from C# except the one at Per-Object frequency
  
  
  • Still shadow pass to fix
    
• Editor Outline shader support for alpha tested object
  
  
• Keyword stripping support (Limit shader variant at build time)
  
  
  • Control by RenderPipeline Asset ‘support’ flags
    
    
  • Each Material can provide their rules to exclude shader variant
    
    
  • How this work as Asset is suppose to be assign at runtime?
    
• Better support of “support” flags in RenderPipeline Asset
  
  
  • Don’t allocate memory, remove shader variant
    
• Enable SRP Batcher by default (Almost stable to be enabled but not fully yet)
  
  
• VFX editor compatibility - Unlit / Lit opaque
  
  
• Subset of HD features support in Shader graph (Part that is share with Lightweight)
  
  
• Disable per object-light culling
  

Debug

• New debug mode
  
  
  • FalseColor, Correct Lux Meter, shadowmap visualization
    
• Texture streaming debugging
  

Lighting

• New Light type
  
  
  • Function to generate an emissive mesh for line and rectangle area light (rectangle) of correct size and intensity, allow to get correct GI.
    
    
  • Realtime Planar reflection probe
    
    
    • Glossy reflection support
      
      
    • Light in planar reflection other than directional light are not working (Planar use an oblique matrix and the gpu light culling code is not compatible with it yet)
      
  • Reflection Probe
    
    
    • Clear Reflection Probe to black and disable Sky to not be polluted by Sky in first bounce (Martin problem report)
      
  • Optimization: Sort LightDefinition property by access order
    

• Volumetric lighting
  
  
  • Support directional, point, spot, cookie, shadows
    
    
  • Support ambient probe
    
    
  • Homogenous and local fog
    
    
  • Reuse cluster light list
    
    
  • Settings control by Volume settings
    
    
  • Support 3D Texture to control heterogeneous fog
    

• SS Reflection / SS Refraction
  
  
  • More perceptually linear roughness for refraction
    
    
  • Use color pyramid from previous frame
    
    
  • Support proxy and hierarchical screen space trace
    
    
  • Current HiZ version is not working correctly and have performance problem
    

• Global illumination
  
  
  • Support shadow mask control per light (no more global choice of distant shadow mask and regular shadow mask, all light use shadow mask distance and can optionally have regular shadow mask enabled (i.e render of only non lightmapped object in dynamic shadow).
    
    
  • Enlighten still not support inverse square attenuation
    

Material

• Support Normal+Roughness buffer dump during depth prepass
  
  
  • Required to perform SSR or SSAO in forward (feature parity)
    
    
  • Required for shadow normal bias of deferred directional shadow
    

• Lit / LayeredLit
  
  
  • SpecularAA
    
    
    • Add geometric anti-aliasing term from Yusuke Tokuyoshi
      
  • Subsurface scattering
    

• Auto thickness calculation (based on shadow map if available) for thick mode
  

• StackLit (Automotive / VFX) - Follow Laurent Belcour research
  
  
  • Isotropic GGX coat layer on top of anisotropic GGX layer
    
    
  • Coat normal
    
    
  • Dual specular
    
    
  • Geometric and texture normal filtering: Normal map texture need to be specifically generated for texture filtering
    
    
  • Subsurface, Transmission, Iridescence
    
    
  • SpecularAA
    
    
    • Add geometric anti-aliasing term from Yusuke Tokuyoshi
      
      
    • Add support of variance + normal map (variance is generated at import from normal map and combine correctly in shader graph / shader)
      
      
      • Done but not working good
        

• Decal improvement
  
  
  • Support Decal Mesh for DBuffer
    
    
  • Optimization
    
    
  • Support UV tiling
    

Camera

• Better handling of motion vector
  
  
  • Support correctly motion vector in motion vector pass
    

 

>For us, particles and xb1 ESRAM performance are probably the only things we miss.
Certainly not what you are waiting for, but currently Shuriken unlit particles work.
Shuriken lit particles work too (with a lit shader) if you don't use Shuriken feature (i.e don't use vertex color or related)...

There is a plan for a new nodal GPU VFX editor to come for HDRP, it's in progress.

>You mentioned the internal teams use there own tools for the material interface stuff,
it is usually a script launch on the whole game data, or a script executed at import time with some naming convention. nothing fancy or elaborate.

Cheers

 

Hi,

>"Disable per object-light culling" So that's truly intended to be that way ?
We don't use it in HDRP and it was wasting CPU performance, what was your intented usage?

>1. Have no idea what 'here' means in that context
Poke @Tim-C

 

We have a fix in the works for this

 

Thanks for making a bug report. This is on our radar but the bug report helps with prioritization.

 

Hey, I don't know if light culling mask is supported d in LW. And yes, it is something different.
@Tim-C ?

 

Sadly the setup is not friendly currently, of course we want to improve that in the future...

For now, from what If i remember well, you have two files to edit:
- LightLoop.cs at line ~128 when SetGlobalShadowOverride is called you can change the shadow algorithm to PCSS, also make sure to use the ShadowVariant V0 with PCSS as it has only one variant.
- To access the PCSS shadow settings you have to comment the
```[CustomEditor(typeof(AdditionalShadowData))```
line in AdditionalShadowDataEditor.cs
And then normally in the light inspector you'll see PCSS's properties `shadow softness` and `sample count` at the bottom of the AdditionalShadowData component

 

What is the purpose ? You can check any manifest in the github database as an example (in core, in LW, in HDRP...)

 

Using GeometryAntialiasing can help, TAA can be tweaked a bit but will not solve all the issues.
If the problem come from normal map, it mean this is a texture filtering issue and we haven't added that currently.

 

Hi, Not for 2018.3

 

Hi,

Doc is here: https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ScriptableRenderPipeline/wiki/sky-and-fog with an example of how to write a custom sky to make a gradient (Yes, not friendly way yo handle this sorry).
We plane to hide the environment lighting on the lighting panel soon, so user are not confuse by it.

We may add the gradient later, not a priority due to other task.