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Question Volumetrics quality degraded in HDRP 10.2.2

Discussion in 'High Definition Render Pipeline' started by nehvaleem, Feb 25, 2021.

  1. nehvaleem

    nehvaleem

    Joined:
    Dec 13, 2012
    Posts:
    429
    Hi,
    I would like to know what happened to the volumetrics in HDRP 10.2.2? The visuals have degraded a lot for me and I cannot make it look as good as before. Event cranking all the settings up leaves me with the worse quality (and crippling performance) than in HDRP 8.2.0.

    This is how it looks in HDRP 10.0.0-preview.27 (Unity 2020.2.0b9)


    And this is how it looks in HDRP 10.3.1 (Unity 2020.2.6f1)

    It looks the same as bad in HDRP 11.0.0 (Unity 2021.1.0b8)

    It is very noticeable on a still picture and it is even worse on movement. I haven't changed any of the settings, the project was updated and leaves me with the worse quality than it was before.

    I would really appreciate anyone explaining it to me. Maybe there is something wrong with me and I don't know I should make some adjustments after upgrading, but the docs aren't mentioning any info regarding this.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2021
  2. pierred_unity

    pierred_unity

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    May 25, 2018
    Posts:
    433
    Hey, you'll need to retune the effect slightly, either using the "Balance" mode (newly introduced in HDRP10), or stick to the "Manual" mode (same as in older versions).

    On your older versions, you had 120 slices, so to reproduce this in HDRP10, you just have to switch to "Manual" and use these values and it'll look identical. Or, you could instead use the new "Balance" mode, which lets you define a given budget (or cost), and then tune the ratio between camera plane resolution vs depth resolution. Using the new Balance mode is a lot easier, you just set the cost, and then the ratio, and it will maintain the cost constant. The previous Manual method was very tedious when trying to maintain the cost, as it was nearly impossible to tune the XY quality and Z quality easily.

    In any case, you should be able to match the quality without any issue. Also, for best quality (but higher cost), you might want to switch to "Reprojection" (or "Reprojection + Gaussian" if it's not blurring too much). You most likely already had reprojection on in your older project, but this setting moved from the camera frame settings to the volume system for convenience. And you have it disabled at the moment (you're using Gaussian on your new project).

    Also, to avoid changes between Unity version, it's a good idea to override these settings on your end, so that they aren't modified when you upgrade, as we sometimes need to change the default values used by the volume system (either for cost or for introducing new features).
     
    ibbybn likes this.
  3. nehvaleem

    nehvaleem

    Joined:
    Dec 13, 2012
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    Thanks for the detailed explanation. It works pretty much ok unless I am using density volumes. Have they changed also in some way?

    This is how it looks with the settings you've mentioned. It's still very grainy. When I am not using density volumes I am indeed able to get smooth fog as I did before HDRP 10.



    On the other hand - when having density volumes in the scene I have to crank the slice count to somewhere around 700 which is really bad for performance reasons.

    I also tried quality presets and this is how it looks with the high quality


    Thanks in advance!
     
  4. pierred_unity

    pierred_unity

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
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    You need to tune the denoising mode in the fog settings in your volume. Try out the different options.

    Make sure you also have temporal anti-aliasing on your camera.
     
  5. nehvaleem

    nehvaleem

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    Having both reprojection + gaussian, temporal anti-aliasing leaves me with very noticeable flickering as seen on the video below

     
  6. nehvaleem

    nehvaleem

    Joined:
    Dec 13, 2012
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    sorry to bother, but @pierred_unity is there anything that can I do to make it look more like in the previous versions? The flickering is unbearable and I am able to rid of it only by crippling performance a lot.
     
  7. pierred_unity

    pierred_unity

    Unity Technologies

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    Hey, that's a very odd issue. Getting rid of 100% of all flickering can be tricky on very small sources of lights, but this amount you see all over the place is unexpected.

    It looks as if the reprojection is not working at all and is producing this flickering.

    Could you make sure your cameras have Reprojection turned on by default? (and if you use custom frame settings on your game camera, that the reprojection is on there too)

    upload_2021-3-3_15-59-53.png
     
  8. nehvaleem

    nehvaleem

    Joined:
    Dec 13, 2012
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    Yes, it is enabled and I am not using custom frame settings. As I said before the effect is much more visible when using density volumes. Maybe this could be some hint?
     
  9. pierred_unity

    pierred_unity

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    May 25, 2018
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    Maybe, there is definitely an issue between them and the reprojection. If I turn off reprojection in my test scene, I'm getting very similar artifacts to yours.

    At this stage, it might be best to create a bug report and upload a stripped-down project that showcases this issue. ;)