Is there a way to avoid "Compiling shader variants" part of the build time?

check yourself, for example check for the compilation of the shader Grass Subsurface Lit. that log there was an error in a shader, the editor told me after 90 minutes of compilation. I have started now again and I am 50minutes in.

I am sure something is not normal. I am going to send you the second log once the building is done.

 

testing your suggestion immediately because it's killing me. Just to confirm, are you saying to make all our shaders addressable or something else too?

Doesn't the duplication detection fix take care of this by the way?

 

this is part of our workflow, so the shaders were already addressable. I will be back to you with more info asap.

 

I just upgraded to URP after years of holding it off.

Now I run into this

Any tips on how to reduce the amount of "fp"?

 

It def is not fixed in 2021.1.23:

- Optimize Mesh Data Off
- Shader carche already compiled
- Changing one single shader still triggers recompiling of all the other ones too

This is really insane and completely unreliable for professional development.

 

100%, when it's using the cache it takes 1/100 of the time to compile.

 

What should I call the bug though?
"Unity randomly triggers full shader recompile, no consistent way of repro that?" ^^"
Also, platform specific cache is always deleted, going back to a platform that i previously compiled for triggers a full shader recompile for that platform :/

EDIT: another bug, 2021.1.23 seems to be recompiling even shaders that are not present nor referenced in the scenes to build

 

I am not sure which platforms you're trying it on, but we're at the point that we have a machine dedicated to PC builds and one to Switch builds in the office, because switching platforms was made impossible by continuous shader recompiling.

 

URP, using Amplify.

 

Something is wrong in 2021. 2019 and 2020 builds where faster, few minutes to neverending compile times as in 2021:

Got this error in the shader after the build failed:

 

Here is the current amount of memory Unity is leaking while building:

Btw, this is the default URP Clearcoat Lit (only with a different name).
PS: Will report the bug soon.

 

It now stoped at this vartiant number and isn't moving, probably crashed:

 

They don't, I'm using version control and I can see if shaders change or not.
That said, using Addressables makes it even more of a nightmare as full shaders rebuild are triggered continuously.

 

will be able to do this tomorrow, cause rebuilding shaders takes literally the whole night and there's no way to revert it.
Or is it ok if I make the build fail, cause you can see what triggers the rebuild anyway?

 

I PM you the editor log and the shader. The build failed after hours trying to compile the shader...
And this is only one shader, i don't wanna see multiple shaders in a project.
PS: In 2019 i never had this problem my builds where 1-2 minutes.

 

Having same problem in 2022... just trying to build the Empty Project and took almost 2h... almost going back to unity 2017... URP/HDRP broke the engine so much that's almost unbereable..

 

Hi...please I'm also having about 200 scenes in my project but the APK size is enormous...how did you go about this?

 

I don't quite believe this. I do for hand written shaders, but it appears that shadergraph shaders compile thousands of variants each and every build.

I made 3 windows D3D11 builds back-to back and each build did a full recompile with 99% of the time spent on the two shadergraph shaders I use. ('Optimize' was turned off for the 2nd and 3rd builds.)

I do have a shaderassset created, that was saved after running the full app in the editor in it's entirety (approx 144 shader variants), but it doesn't seem to have much of an effect on build times.

 

We're currently on 2022.1.16f1, I'm hesitant to update again as the road from 2018LTS to 2020LTS was fraught with painful issues that kept forcing us to upgrade and rebuild systems well out of the LTS comfort zone. In fact the primary culprit graph is the result of having to re-build our previous Built-In pipeline shader. (URP + OpenXR + SPR is a hell of a combination with many delicate parts that frequently have bugged packages.)

Of the two shader graphs that are the cause of 90% of our build time, the most variant expensive is the attached. It's built on top of URP Lit to add support for a Fresnel surface shell highlight in addition to tightly packing Metallic, Smoothness, and Emissive into the RGB channels of a single secondary texture. (2 Keywords, 6 branches on top of what LIT already uses)

As our release platform is extremely controlled, our oldest Nvidia card uses shader model 6 so we don't need to worry about supporting variants/fallbacks below that let alone the other GPU manufacturers. Is there a simple way we can exclude shader models and features like fog from Lit without rewriting it by hand? I'm passable in HLSL at best and am not sure I can safely gut URP Lit for single pass instanced XR rendering with the fancy PBR lighting.

Side note, I'm open to constructive feedback on the attached shader. I know there's a better way to achieve our goal, I'm just not experienced enough in tech-artistry to grasp it yet.

 

I can't send the application scene due to the nature of our training content, but will see if I can get a demo scene put together for uploading as a report. (life would be so much easier if we only made games)

 

Is there any known solution?

 

Ok, will do. Thank you.

 

Is there any possibility you can have an option to just not compile unused variants?

 

Yes, try modifying this GitHub tool to fit your project and using it. It applies changes to all shaders.
Though by default it doesn't strip hidden, legacy, unlit, particles. I recommend testing commenting out that line.
https://gist.github.com/yasirkula/d8fa2fb5f22aefcc7a232f6feeb91db7

I would add these to keywords if they aren't used in your project.

Code (CSharp):

1.         new ShaderKeyword( "VERTEXLIGHT_ON" ),
2.         new ShaderKeyword( "LOD_FADE_CROSSFADE" ),

Use this asset to remove variants from the build.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/shader-control-74817

It doesn't modify shader files, instead creates a scriptableObject in the Resources folder and uses
IPreprocessShaders and
OnProcessShader
to remove variants on build time.

Not just variants, you can also use it to remove a whole shader (including their variants) from a build.
For example, I use Microsplat, and although its unused unity terrain was still getting in the build. I removed unity terrain from the build using it.

But some Hidden/TerrainEngine should be included even if you use Microsplat, without them, Microsplat also doesn't work properly. I think these are related and there are more but I didn't test each of them;
Hidden/TerrainEngine/Splatmap/Diffuse-Addpass
Hidden/TerrainEngine/Splatmap/Diffuse-Base

You can also use Shader Control to remove the LIGHTMAP_ON keyword from shaders that you never bake lightmaps with. Of course, you can modify shaders to remove that, but if you are using assets and don't want to modify them, or for Hidden internal shaders its a nice option.

BetterLit also has its own shader stripper. If you are using BetterLit, use BetterLitVariantConfig and enable the toggles for options that you aren't using.

In Project Settings/Graphics there is a ShaderStripping header and under that many options. Disable everything that you aren't using. For example Fog Modes and lightmap modes.

After these changes, my build time was reduced from 7 minutes to 2 minutes. Build size reduced by 30mb. Memory use was reduced by 100mb.