How is UI supposed to work in HDRP with one camera?

Hey
We need some guidance with how to handle the ingame HUD with just one camera as demanded by HDRP.

HDRP demands only one camera as of now, but this means post processing and everything also affects our UI
And if you want to enable TAA, the UI gets extremely blurry when moving the camera, which is making it unusable

Tonemapping makes the UI very poorly readable.

We tried following that one FPS demo tutorial but that is for LWRP with the render passes and the options do not exist in HDRP.

What is the intended workflow?

 

You can exclude layers from your volume.
Are you talking about a screen overlay UI or a 3D one?

 

We have a classical overlay Hud but its also using some 3D elements / Planes with materials

Are you sure? When I tried layers that did not change anything in the volume. Also post processing should technically not be able to seperate between layers no? Changing layers does nothing to the volume, both in local and global setting, just tested

 

With a second camera you could exclude post processing by turing them off in the custom frame settings of the HD camera.
But with only one camera I think you only could make a difference with Light layer.

So if you have a dark tonemapping, you could add a light source that affects only your 3D UI through light layers in order to make them brighter.

 

There must be one official way to handle UI when support for more than 1 camera was removed, traditionally a separate camera is used and every game has UI, surely the HDRP Team has one particular way of doing this in mind

 

I'm also having difficulties with using one camera

• UI Camera
• Dual render scope
• First person hands / weapons clipping through objects
• Top down radar view

It would be nice to know how to deal with these scenarios, or what plans the team has in mind for the future.

 

Push

 

Similar issue - I NEED to exclude assets from post processing in HDRP - IT'S ESSENTIAL!

 

Yes exactly

 

Hi. We have several 3D planes with Video Players and other streamed texture content in our scenario.
How i can exclude them from TAA.
TAA is smearing this content in all settings but it is needed for all other 3D geometries.

In BuiltIn RP we render these content with a second camera without TAA.

 

Repoert this as bug. Only way it could be addressed with final 7.20.

 

Mhmmm? It s not realIy a bug.
You could solve it with camera stackin in BuiltIn RP.
In HDRP it did not find a way to create an comparable "workaround".

Hope someone has some idea.

 

HDRP is terrible with more than one camera right now. All sorts of performance issues and bugs when using more than one camera in a scene. I'm guessing you'll have to wait for it be fixed internally by Unity.

 

I played it a bit but I don't know how to do it.

Is it possible to create a custom pass and exclude UI from PP ?

 

Maybe scriptable but that surely requires an experienced graphics programmer which our team does not have
In LWRP there is a tutorial for it but comparable things do not exist in HDRP it seems

I assume there is just no solution in place yet, but this definitely should have a high priority on the radar, there needs to be a equivalent solution to the classic 2 camera workflow basically all studios do in one way or another, it cant just be taken away and not given anything in return.
Every game needs UI and many games use first person as well.

 

You can still render a camera to a render texture. Espicially regarding UI, this should solve your problem. In the camera settings you can also define which the volume layer is the camera uses.

 

Currently, for me at least, using a render texture in HDRP causes massive amounts of garbage collection for some reason (by default). I've tried adjusting several settings on the render texture (size, depth use, aliasing, etc...) but the performance is still horrendous.

In my opinion this is simply not a viable, real option. This is another thing I hope Unity fixes in 2019.3.

 

Did you try the new incremental garbage collector? There is a boolean for it in the build: "Player Settings" under "Other Settings".

 

Doing some experimenting on how to do this - what it seems to boil down to is the intended workflow seems to be to use the Render Pass setting on the material. For canvas UI this means creating a Canvas UI material + Shader with that renders in `After Post-process` with no z-test.

Here is a minimal shader graph example based on HDRP/Unlit that will render a canvas with alpha. Note it is important that the texture input is referenced as `_MainTex`. The render pass must be set on the material.



For this screen shot I've jacked up the bloom to prove that the canvas is rendered after post-porcess and placed the canvas half way into the floor to prove that it's rendered on top of geometry. The canvas its self is in world space mode.

I tried this with the new XR packages + Windows MR headset and it appears to be working. I have not tested TAA.

For more general information about creating a Canvas shader, I found this thread helpful: https://forum.unity.com/threads/shader-graph-ui-image-shader.628111/

However I still have a problem that TextMesh Pro shaders (or third party shaders) don't seem to be possible be set up this way. The ultimate solution may be to move the entire UI to a custom render pass. But that's a little beyond my skill level..

 

After trying use Unlit shader to render UI with Mask without success.
I found I can use Custom Pass to render UI with Mask without Post Processing.

1.Enable Custom Pass
2.Create a Custom Pass volume and add a DrawRenderersCustomPass.
3.Set Injection Point to After Post Process.
4.Set Queue to Transparent
5.Set Layer Mask to which your UI is.
6.Set Sorting to Common Transparent.

There are bugs if you build without Development Build.
Screen will turn black.
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ScriptableRenderPipeline/pull/5429

 

The HDRP Custom Passes github ( https://github.com/alelievr/HDRP-Custom-Passes ) uses the same workflow to render its "blur" effect after all post process.

I'm still trying to blur a single "transparent" UI rectangle to use as background for modern UI, but had no luck with it.

This is the effect I'm looking for:



Did any of you manage to recreate blurred UIs?

 

I wish could have my UI not blurred,
(TAA'd and Tonemapped) ; P

Lilacsky did you have any success?

 

If you want PP(especially TAA) on your UI then you can use Unlit shader in shader graph.
Because built-in UI shader seems didn`t generate motion vectors which cause blur when moving(when use TAA).
However you can`t use Mask anymore since shader graph don`t handle stencil buffer properly.

If you don`t want PP affect UI then you can use the solution that I post above(Use Custom Pass).
TAA and Tonemapping won`t affect UI anymore.

 

Hey, this seems to work with our 3D UI with materials and meshes,
but all the unity GUI (text, icons, sprites) all turn pink material now - what are we doing wrong there?



Here my settings:



Also I need shader graph on our UI and the UI needs to be lit, basically the same case as a first person weapon. Can this be done with shader graph as well? A unlit shader is very limiting.

A - Also this does then mean I can not otherwise post process my UI`?

B - If custom passes are always unlit, then first person weapons, 3d lit UI etc, are all impossible?

Custom passes sound very useful but this dosnt seem like a acceptable replacement for dual camera at all so far.
I just need 2 cameras and 2 different settings of AA / post processing / camera effects.

 

Hmm, this is very limiting

We will try with a rendertarget right now.

 

Ok different question, I think I can go around the issue mostly by just putting the text and icons into a different pass.

How can I fix the issue with the Unity GUI elements turning pink with the custom render pass?
(My settings are posted above)

 

Do you use built-in UI shader?

 

Yes, just classic default UI Sprites, Raw Images and Unity Text

 

I think Unity team need work faster for solve HDRP problem if you guys have this problem like me we can make topic on unity HDRP and report this as bug

Problem 1: Post processing Effect in simple UI can solve with Custom HD UI in shader graph but i don't know how make shader for work with text mesh pro and text that is problem

Problem 2: in Canvas Camera i have big problem All UI Element flowing with camera and player and when camera rotate and ui going back of some object UI disappear (UI pass not render after All render layer)

Problem 3: in out game we have Map, 3D HP system and Customization Character all of this need multi camera setup so i can't Implement all of this with HDRP now(i done Map, 3D HP system with custom shader with shader graph and Render texture but its not look good and lack in performance)

and if anyone have solution good to know how solve it

 

Any solution for the pink shaders when trying to render UI elements with the extra pass?

 

Here is also an interesting thread with a potential workaround for some of the issues:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/world-space-ui-with-hdrp.835606/

 

I found there is something missing in your screenshot,there should have shader pass option in overrides.
Maybe you can try assigning material with UI shader?

 

Why can't there be a bool check on the canvas to enable/disable PP...
why are we still spending time on stuff like this for months...

 

This allowed me to have masked UI without affected by PP. There is one more problem remaining for me though.
How do I make Unity to draw to my right eye on single pass instanced set up?

Unity 2019.4.1f HDRP7.3.1

 

I've been unable to get this to work without using an HDRP/Lit or HDRP/Unlit material or ShaderGraph based shader.

What I wound up doing is reading the source code for `UI/Default`, making a ShaderGraph based work-alike, dropping it on a material, and applying that material to any canvas image or text object. I can post it if there is interest, but I haven't been able to line up the stencil semantics, so it doesn't work with masking. Also I've not been able to solve TextMesh Pro text in right eye with this technique (the shader is pretty complicated).

However, from a design standpoint, I would recommend to minimize use of `Canvas` as much as possible in HDRP VR. The performance is terrible because it does not participate in SRP batching. Consider "real" 3d objects as much as possible instead, even if it's just a quad.

 

With this method, UI Mask is now working without affected by PP but I still have the last issue with the HDRP setup for my VR project.

UI is not rendered on the right eye.

I can make unity draw on both eyes by the method here(https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...left-eye-with-single-pass-hdrp-oculus.912626/) but with that method, as far as I tested, UI mask stops working again...

What could be the solution? How I can make single pass instanced and UI mask without affected by PP at the same time?

@foonix Yeah, thank you for you adivice. My VR project is a kind of 3d model viewer and I need file managing system in it. I have a tablet in the VR environment and I would like to display that file manager on that. In this kind of use case, I think general ui system still be very suitable if it works properly...

 

What’s the best way currently to render UI to a render texture in HDRP (for use as computer screens for example)?
Simply adding a second camera and setting the render target to render texture kills the performance... (most likely due to all the passes of the hdrp camera)
Using Fullscreen passthrough helps with performance, but doesn’t render the UI at all...

 

I have played around with the second camera method this morning. It works kinda ok. The performance was a issue of course but the biggest disappointment for me was the lack of transparency of UI.

If the "solution" @SebLagarde mentioned as "HDRP will come with a solution later (but costly: as rendering a second camera in unity is costly on CPU)." above in this thread solve the all issues we discuss here, the second camera method maybe the best option for us just for now because it will not be to hard to adapt to the future solution when it comes out.

The point is when it will be, though. It has been 6 months for now since he posted it.

 

After reading through this thread and experimenting a bit more I got UI to render in AfterPostprocess using a "Custom Pass Volume" with carefully selecting the right settings:
(this is on HDRP 7.5)
The Canvas needs to use "Screen Space - Camera" for this to work, regular Overlay doesn't.

 

This does improve the UI for me, but the UI still looks bad with anti-aliasing enabled. Any ideas?

 

Thank you for your response.
Here it is before adding the custom pass

Here it is after

This is how it looks without anti-aliasing

Here are my custom pass settings

I am taking these screenshots while moving the camera and canvas.
Using TAA.

 

TXXAA doesn't work well with particles (vfx graph) and some postprocessing effects like bloom. With TXAA is visible downgrade on particles.
Tested on 7.5.1 and 8.2.
As the matter of fact, does TXAA disables bloom ?

8.2 crashes a lot without bug report prompt (https://forum.unity.com/threads/crash-hdrp-8-2.971007/). Could you update to new 8.3+?

 

Is it possible to set that render pass in a basic shader or only via the material like that?

 

Hi,
i facing same problems.

Did you checked the HDRP Compositor

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/c...h-definition@10.1/manual/Compositor-Main.html

https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...-definition/Documentation~/Compositor-Main.md

 

I leave this here.
My problem got finally solved here

https://github.com/alelievr/HDRP-Custom-Passes

Video Textures and other streamed in moving content without TAA smearing when camera or content moves.

There a also other UI examples.

 

In 2020.3.1f1 there is an additional step required after the above is complete. On the Camera, select General -> Custom Frame Settings -> Rendering -> After Post-Process.
Then it works.

 

This might interest you: https://github.com/alelievr/HDRP-UI-Camera-Stacking
It's a package to do camera stacking for GUI in HDRP without paying the cost of actual camera stacking.