Render a Canvas to RenderTexture?

Hi guys,
Is there any way to render a canvas to RenderTexture?

I want to render the entire screen to RenderTexture, so I'm using:

RenderTexture rt = new RenderTexture(x, y, 24);
foreach (Camera cam in Camera.allCameras)
{

cam.targetTexture = rt;
cam.Render();
cam.targetTexture = null;​

}

But it doesn't render the GUI...

 

(bump...)

Some more info ... The Canvas is set to "Screen Space - Camera"
The camera is orthographic, and is showing the GUI in the editor and game view.
cam.redner() renders the skybox or solid color to the renderTexture, but not the GUI.

Does anyone have any idea? or should I file a bug?

 

As much as it saddens me to say this it's likely a bug and you should file one. i'm going to guess that maybe it won't get fixed for v1 but hopefully soon after

 

He says he already is using ScreenSpace-Camera and it's not working.

 

Can you actually make the overlay UI "go through a normal render pipeline"?
Is it possible to capture the UI somehow in a render texture and blit it to the scene behind? A feature like this would be great to enable post processing effects on a canvas.
Are we stuck using Screen Space - Camera UI in this case?

 

true. I want to find a way to directly render canvas to RenderTexture

 

I already did that succesfully. but not with manual rendering though. If the canvas is set to Screen Space - Camera and the Camera has a render texture assigned, this works quite well for me. Not sure what you want to achieve by manual rendering though, thats something I didn't test for the UI yet.

 

In my case, i need to render the canvas into one texture immediately. And then i don't need this canvas anymore. It will be perfect if i can keep this canvas as prefabs in asset folder instead of the scene.

What i do now is that: I copy this prefabs into scene and create a camera with rendertexture. I call ResetAspect() ResetProjectionMatrix() Render(). And then delete the canvas and the camera. It doesn't work quite well the size of the canvas is wrong. If i let those objects stay, then they can render a correct image in next frame.

 

Has someone solved this?

 

Bump?

 

I combine multiple cameras onto a single rendertexture before blitting to the screen, but my world space canvases are missing

 

Same problem.... Unity5, trying to get some nice screenshots from a button press during gameplay.. I have a single camera with canvas, screen space overlay gui, but the gui does not show up on the Camera.Render()
(also tried world-space and screen-space-camera) all with the same result... no gui rendered.
Any update to this problem ? bug ?

 

i think there is a backport request waiting to be processed to get his fixed.

 

Tested my world canvases in 3.5.0b6 and it seems to be fixed

 

Going to assume you mean 5.3.0b6 but glad to hear hopefully the backport will land in 5.2 "soon"

 

Does this work because it seems like it still doesnt work

 

Cannot get the UI to render to a texture for me on 5.3.1f1 only seems to work with a World Space camera.. not a screen spaced one

 

Experiencing same problem with 4.6.9p3

 

Hi,

Any update on this issue? I'm using 5.3.2f1 and it's not working.
Any suggested workarounds?

Regards,

Farooq

 

Echo, Echo, echoooooooo....

Same here peeps. mine is running on unity 5.3.4f1 and my canvas is set at screen space - overlay

Anyone know about a workaround?
Was the bug made?

 

I am seeing this issue in 5.3.4p6

 

We encounter same problem with 5.3.5f1

Tracker 1:
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/ui-rendertexture-does-not-render-world-space-ui

Tracker 2:
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/ui-elements-arent-rendered-to-rendertexture

 

Same here in 5.3.4f1. I have tried to render the UI on a UICamera seperately with ScreenSpace - Camera, it does not show the Canvas, but the elements are interactable though.

https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/rendertextures-do-not-include-canvas-ui-elements

 

sorry guys i figured it out and forgot to post it.

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System.Collections;
3. //using System.IO;
4.  
5. public class MyScreenShotUI : MonoBehaviour {
6.  
7.  
8.     void Start(){
9.  
10.  
11.  
12.     }
13.  
14.  
15.     public void myScreenShot(){
16.  
17.         StartCoroutine (TakeScreenShot());
18.  
19.     }
20.  
21.  
22.     IEnumerator TakeScreenShot() {
23.  
24.         yield return new WaitForEndOfFrame();
25.  
26.  
27.         var width = Screen.width;
28.         var height = Screen.height;
29.         var tex = new Texture2D( width, height, TextureFormat.RGB24, false );
30.  
31.  
32.         tex.ReadPixels( new Rect(0, 0, width, height), 0, 0 );
33.         tex.Apply();
34.  
35.  
36.     }
37.  
38. }

just call myScreenShot(); in your code somewhere. So "tex" now has the screen shot value, make any public texture equal to that value to use it. Hope it works for you.

 

Nice I'll give this a shot!

 

cool,

please let me know, it works for me.

 

Works fine in editor when width == Screen.width and height == Screen.height but it cannot be used to create bigger than current resolution screenshots.

 

sorry i don't follow, why would you want to create a screen shot of something bigger than the actual resolution? a screenshot by definition can't be bigger than itself. Your taking a image of what the current screen sees (that is what this thread is about, right?) and even if so,the result will be pixelated, don't you think?

but yea i get where your coming from, every device will have a different size, but maybe thats just how it goes... or am i missing something? now I'm confused, can one tell it at what size to take the screen capture?

 

Use cases for bigger renderings are getting those glamour shots (like Mega Grab https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/533 does) and UI testing. AFAIK currently it is not possible to get e.g. 3840 x 2160 shot from game with UGUI if one has 1920 x 1080 resolution monitor. That is why it would be REALLY useful if Canvas could be rendered to RenderTexture.

 

ScreenCapture.CaptureScreenshot("file.jpg",4);

will give you a large capture 4x the size of your resolution.

 

I confirm. On the Canvas component, I set Plane Distance to 0.3 (which corresponds to the camera near plane), and I also had to modify values on the Canvas Scaler (Scale Factor to 0.5)

 

sadly, there is still no good method to render canvas to rendertexture.

(no ScreenCapture.CaptureScreenshot() is not, World-Space either unless you like filters messing up your 2d ui)

 

Oh wow. I just wanted to render my screen to a texture with the UI overlay on it still. I didn't realize I would have to read 7 years worth of comments and conversation just to learn that Unity has not addressed this problem...

Oh well.

 

Still nothing?

 

Holy moly, still nothing in here...

 

1) Set "Render Camera" in Canvas to your camera.
2) Create script with this code:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. [RequireComponent(typeof(Camera))]
3. public class Blitter : MonoBehaviour
4. {
5.     private RenderTexture temporaryRT;
6.     private Camera mainCamera;
7.  
8.     private RenderTexture target;
9.  
10.     private void Awake()
11.     {
12.         mainCamera = GetComponent<Camera>();
13.     }
14.  
15.     private void OnPreRender()
16.     {
17.         temporaryRT = RenderTexture.GetTemporary(Screen.width, Screen.height);
18.         mainCamera.targetTexture = temporaryRT;
19.     }
20.  
21.     private void OnPostRender()
22.     {
23.         Graphics.Blit(temporaryRT, target);
24.         mainCamera.targetTexture = null;
25.  
26.         RenderTexture.ReleaseTemporary(temporaryRT);
27.     }
28. }
29.  
30.  

4) Attach it to camera setted for render canvas
5) Use RenderTexture target anywhere you need.