Official Unite Now Q&A - Evolving Game Graphics with the Universal Render Pipeline

Unite Now Session
Ready to take your game visuals to the next level? Join us for an in-Editor demo of recently released graphics features sure to improve your game. We cover popular tools like Scriptable Render Features for Toon-style Outlines and Camera Stacking for UI.

When
Thu, May 28, 9:00 AM PT


Where
You can watch the session here!
Make sure to sign up to get access to all Unite Now content.


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Together with this Unite Now session we are also hosting a Q&A here in this thread to answer as many of your questions as possible.


A team of product experts from across Unity will be available starting after the session. Our Community team will continue to field questions to foster an ongoing discussion with the community. Please feel free to ask your questions in this thread.


Some basic rules

• Don’t bundle multiple unrelated questions in one reply. One question/topic per reply.
  
  
  
• Only questions related to the topics of the session are permitted.
  
  
  
• All questions will be fielded by our Community Managers (@LeonhardP and @AskCarol)
  • Replies will have to be approved by the moderators to show up in the thread.
    
    
    
  • Once approved, the questions will be forwarded to the relevant experts.

We really look forward to hearing from the community.

Thank you!

 

Hey, thank you for the introduction to URP. Learning it myself over the last couple of weeks, it did take some getting used to, since it's quite different to the built-in RP. So thank you for clearing a few things up!
I do have a question, though, so I can better wrap my head around the intended workflow.
What I've been trying to get going is a Bloom PP effect, just using the built in bloom and a global PP volume. This appears to be applied after the AA has gone over the picture, and so there is some noticeable flickering on small emissive object (like start in the sky).

How would I go about so that the bloom is applied before the AA pass happens?

 

So, I guess the Q&A isn't happening...

 

The question was forwarded to the right experts. We are just awaiting their response but due to time zone differences, they might not have seen your message yet. Sorry for the wait and rest assured, it is coming

 

Is it possible to check which versions of Android the URP supports?

I tried converting my game to the LWRP back when it first came out but noticed that when running the game on older hardware, the environments were black and nothing was visible. I'm keen to upgrade from Unity 2019.1 to 2019.4 LTS (I'm very keen on using ShaderGraph) but the idea of moving to a newer platform, only for it to make my game unplayable to a number of users, means I'm hesitant to do so.

Many thanks
Barry

 

You mentioned about reflection probe improvements in video and Im curious do you add reflection probe mask so we can choose which reflection apply to which render layers?

 

Another thing in video is which features will be available for Unity 2019.4 and which is not?

 

An excellent talk from @Andy-Touch as usual. I'd also like to tip my hat to @Andre_Mcgrail and the team for the excellent work that has been done on the boat attack demo and URP and thank you for not only releasing the boat attack demo but also maintaining it.
I've been very critical of late with Unity but I have to say I'm very impressed with the progress that is being made with URP.

The final piece of the jigsaw for me personally is deferred rendering so its nice to see that is coming along in the video. Any idea of an ETA on this?

I'm also pleased to hear that you are looking to release more examples. I hope they also come in the form of a vertical slice because one of many peoples criticisms (me included) has been that Unity does not eat its own dog food, but this for me is a big step in that direction and I would love to see at least one further example of equal quality.

Something else I would like to see is a similar approach being made to HDRP for examples. Possibly even a version of boat attack with two scenarios, one a straight copy of the URP version but correctly setup in HDRP so we can compare and another HDRP version with all the bells and whistles.

I'd also like to see an upgrade path from URP to HDRP in a similar way that you have going from built-in to URP/HDRP.

 

Hey Sidremus!

Thank you for watching!

Do you have a screenshot or video of the flickering that we could look at? Technically, AA should be applied after the Bloom has been applied so perhaps there is something else happening...

 

Hello Bazzajunior!

Ill ask the team if they have a list. Which version of Android were you building to?

 

I uploaded a video of this on Reddit. I also noticed that this does not happen when playing a build of my game. It appears only in the editor / play mode. With it not present in builds it's not a complete dealbreaker, it's just very hard to work on the look of the project without being able to see how it will look in the build.

 

I just heard back from the R&D team that Universal RP supports Android 4.4 and up

 

Hi Andy, that's great news to hear. Looks like I'll be upgrading to URP in the next few days then

 

I downloaded the examples. 3DCharacterUI on Nokia 5 produces 6 FPS(i only update to 2019.3.4f1). I was expecting a reference solution, but received something not applicable.
What to use for 3D on a mobile? Built-in or urp? If urp, then where to get performance?

 

Everything shown in the video in the editor was on 2019.3; so its safe to say that it will be in 2019.4 too.

 

You can already set a reflection probe to cull specific layers; is that what you are referring to?

 

Thank you for watching!

Deferred doesn't currently have an ETA; id imagine it could be available later in the year.

Yes; they are Vertical Slices. I just finished working on a new 2D Example Project that is a vertical slice and uses Universal RP. It'll be made available later in the year. And I also started working on a new 3D Example Project, which is also a vertical slice, that im factoring in using some features that we haven't as much Universal RP example material on (Terrain, VFX Graph with URP, Camera Stacking, etc). Its coming along nicely! I think all future projects going forward will be some kind of Vertical Slice; but also with some more isolated examples as feedback from users is they tend to find smaller projects easier to learn from and lift mechanics/code/shaders into their own projects.

Boat Attack in HDRP would be an interesting project! But thats probably more for the HDRP team to attempt.

One initiative we are working on is a closer alignment and compatibility between Universal RP and HDRP; systems like VFX Graph, Shader Graph, Volumes, Post Processing etc already have overlaps between the two in terms of workflow and compatibility (IE: Shader Graph's PBR Master Node works with both Render Pipelines).

 

Sorry for delay in reply; it was the weekend plus public holiday in Denmark! Im back now and with some extra info from our Senior Rendering Artist:

The problem is that the stars will go subpixel, and if they are very bright, and the bloom is set to be very strong, it will flicker/flash whenever the star becomes big enough in screen space to be picked up by the bloom.

You need to make sure the stars are large enough relative to the resolution of the bloom (if the bloom is half res for instance, you need the stars to take at least 2*2 pixels in screen space).

As an expensive workaround, in the quality settings of the URP asset, you could set the render scale at 2x, which will in practice double the res the bloom is operating at (but also massively increase everything else).

Technically, stars shouldn't bloom in the first place... so I'd be curious to see why you them to bloom.Obviously, if it's a fantasy game, that's another story, but the subpixel rule will apply, no matter what, and no amount of MSAA can really solve this.

 

Let us know how it goes!

 

The 3DCharacterUI demo isn't really set up for mobile performance; it needs more optimizations.

In terms of Built-In or URP; it really depends on your workflow and needs. What are you aiming to create?

 

3rd person view dungeon adventure with this pack https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/dungeons/polygon-dungeons-pack-102677
in some cases I need 30 simultaneous animated with mecanim characters. Now mobile-vertexLit give more performance than urp-simpleLit.

 

In the video at 1.00.00 (1 hour) there is the "The Future" section. May I ask which of these features will also be available in 2019.4 LTS?

 

Thanks for the update.

Another thing that impressed me on the boat attack demo was the Water being a package, making it incredibly easy to extract and try in my own project.

 

it would be funny if it were not so sad. One and the same scene, one light source without shadows, hdr and msaa are disabled, post-processing is not applied. Phone Nokia 5, FPS are measured from a script in the camera. vertexlite 19_34 30fps(https://ib43.ru/bi19_34.apk), simpelit 20.1 40fps(https://ib43.ru/urp20_1.apk), vertexlite 17_4 50 + fps(https://ib43.ru/bi17_4.apk) !!! such a strange progress

 

No it is not

I can set culling mask for capture settings it is ok and useless for backed probes
What I want is culling mask for object which will be affected by probe. Like in Lights


Light mask make light affect only renderers on specific layers

 

Thank you for the reply and the delay really isn't an issue.
Well, the workaround with having the render scale 2x really isn't and option. What I don't quite get is, if all this is the case, why the problem disappears in the build? Also, setting the bloom intensity doesn't seem to influence the effect at all. The flickering occurs on all objects that the bloom picks up, and only in a vertical section in the center of the screen. And, again, it disappears in the final build.

Okay, I just deleted a very rude paragraph about the performance and experience of working with URP. I'm sure you guys are working hard, but at times URP really doesn't feel ready. Every camera I stack looses me about 20% of my fps, 25% if there is PP on it. And this is empty scenes.
It's just so frustrating because as solo Dev I really do feel locked in. Going with the built-in RP means no camera stacking when using PPV2 and no shader-graph. Using URP means the game in the editor looks quite from the final build when using PP and the performance lacks.

 

Dear Andy and team

Thank you for the Unite now seminar! Would you mind sharing how you achieved the FPS camera stack in order to stop the FPS gun from clipping through geometry? I watch the seminar and you already had the camera_gun and FPS_gun set up already. I have tried doing the stack in my own game previously with guidance from Unity's video on the FPS sample, however every time I set one camera as an overlay camera, it renders the screen completely black.

Any help would be much appreciated

Thank you for your work
Quinton

 

Hello @Andy-Touch,

Thank you for the talk. I had a question regarding the 3D SkyBox example. In its current state, is it setup well for VR in terms of performance? Also, is there anything I need to change to make it work in my Rift vs desktop?

 

Hi @Andy-Touch there is questions but so small amount of answers from you or UT
https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...niversal-render-pipeline.886192/#post-5933369

 

Also, I've posted this elsewhere but figured I'd try my luck here as well.

I'm unable to switch the Renderer type of my camera for camera stacking purposes.
It works in the URPExamples project, but not in a new URP project.