Bug Subscene entities rendering without fog

Hi, just learning how to use DOTS/Subscenes, but stumbling on a rendering issue I can't figure out..
Using 2020.3.13f, URP 10.6, HybridRenderV2 0.11.0-preview.44 with a project that has a main scene that includes a sub-scene. The entities materials are using a fairly simple shadergraph lit shader.

The scene environment is using Fog. Testing the scene In the editor, everything - including the sub-scene entities are rendered correctly with fog producing the appropriate distanced effect.
i.e. All columns except the center 4 are background entity columns loaded as part of the sub-scene that look correct:


However, when I go to compile the app to a standalone windows (using the build/windows classic build config) the entities loaded in the sub-scene appear unobscured by fog, ..it's like fog doesn't see them.


Any ideas I should be looking at?

 

Thanks, this definitely pointed me in the right direction re: stripped shaders. I was unaware of the 'Fog modes' setting in Graphics. Ultimately, I solved my particular problem by simply changing the Project Settings/Graphics/Shader stripping/Fog Modes value from 'Automatic' to Custom, no other changes.

 

Also note that, if I understand correctly, including unused fog modes could have a very large impact on shader compilation times (which in my projects already usually constitute >90% of build time, despite excellent parallelisation on a 16-core cpu...).

I am actually wondering if it wouldn't be more practical if unity offerred a single, project-wide fog mode setting. In URP/HDRP the amount of shader variants very easily explodes into (tens of) thousands.

Stripping is a thing, but it's difficult to set up, and easily breaks during development, and when it does apparently there's no error message. Is there a reason for this? Why not even store some metadata at build time and log "shader variant XYZ can't be loaded because of build script MyShaderStripping/graphics setting UVW/render pipeline asset ABC"? Or at least the missing keywords and shader name?

This is very useful information, but I don't think it's viable that I do this whenever QA notices that an object is missing/looks wrong in a build, which tends to be a somewhat common occurrence.

Edit: it appears that the latest alpha will log useful info regarding missing shaders: https://forum.unity.com/threads/strict-shader-variant-matching.1167008/

 

Agree, I went back and unchecked the linear and exponential that my small project wasn't using, and definitely an improvement in compile/build time. Now going to investigate de-selecting unused lightmap modes as well. Live and learn.

 

Hi Mingwai, I'll take a look at doing that.. I can confirm if I select Project Settings/Graphics/Shader stripping/Fog Modes 'Custom' and manually select the Fog mode that I know the scene (and sub-scene) uses, that it does include the fog variant for my entities sub-scene shaders/materials and the buildconfig output looks correct and has everything it needs. The problem/bug that I believe might be present is that when using Fog mode 'Automatic', that mode may not be looking into the sub-scene such to include the scene's environmental fog mode for the materials on those entities. I'll put together a small demo scene and submit a bug report just in case..

 

Submitted demo project and case: (Case 1363446) Sub-Scene shader fog variants missing when using buildconfig and subscene not in initial loaded scene

Experimented a little further, and found the issue doesn't occur if using buildconfig and the scene (containing subscene) is the first/only/autoloaded scene. In my case, I use a manager scene as the initial scene, which is responsible for loading subsequent scenes. That's when the FogMode=Automatic issue occurs and the subscene entities don't render with fog.