Who is using HDRP in production?

It looks quite good but crashes a lot in my project.

Who is having luck with HDRP and actually chancing it?

 

hdrp is still to new for production you should use stable for release.

 

I use HDRP
however, the game that I developed is still in pre-production
probably will switch to upcoming Unity LTS for full-scale production

 

can you share some images?
and how is it working out compared to the built in renderer?

 

Unity stated that you should hold until LTS for serious projects you're starting now.

 

HDRP is fine for production. If you are experiencing crashes, file a bug report. HDRP is already being used in production.

 

I am about 3 weeks away from shipping...and the bugs...they are driving me crazy.

 

Which case numbers?
I'm sure Unity can help if they know which ones are stopping you shipping.

 

We are launching early access in next week: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1202830/Cyberception/

you can check screenshots.

Biggest problem there is lack of support for many common scenarios, for example you need to go into serious coding to have post processing not influencing UI, which should be there out of the box, not requiring shader programming.

You don't have camera stacking support (which is there for URP though) which for fps game is kind of important.

There's lot of gaps in the docs, Editor has lot of bugs in terms of hdrp rendering - not a deal breakers though, but make game dev process more tedious and annoying.

There are not many people there with enough knowledge about HDRP to help you more than just repost all the same blog entries and general information.

No native support for realtime GI is a big deal breaker.

Bottom line is that for small team (as ours) it can be overkill to develop project for HDRP at the moment. We cant afford enterprise level support so what left for you is chasing luck here, on the forums to get someone from the unity team to respond (which in 99% would resolve your issue) or dig through github to mess with your local copy of SRP.

For medium/bigger teams, who can either afford unity direct support or have dedicated dev working on it, I would definitely recommend switching to HDRP as it HAS a lot of potential and good stuff. It's just not mature yet enough to be considered out of the box ready for productuon, without dedicated resources to support it within your team.

Looking half a year back, when I started project using preview of the HDRP I would do the same thing again, having all the experience, stress and blokers I went through, but I am an adventurous individual so it's not for everyone.

 

Thanks!

wow! how do you do hand with gun without getting Z jitter?

mind blown, good thing I'm considering having the GUI as a 3D element in the scene ... oh wait, I read somewhere that one of the GUI render mode wasn't supported in HDRP

You dialed volumetric all the way to 11 in there buddy, it's the new lens flare

Specifics?

My turn:
I use the Raytracing (preview) stuff because that 2 bounces realtime GI is just too good to pass, and I'm just doing trailer previs at this point. The result is bloody gorgeous, so nice in fact that I'm considering keeping that no texture look. Refresh time is acceptable on a 2060rtx, I'd say 15 fps.
There is a Maya import bug that turns standard surface into gray unity hdrp lit, easy workaround in maya by switching all that to legacy phong or lambert
HD Lights are forgetful until tickled: they blast the scene as if they were in 1/r and when I select them they go "now i remember, I'm a modern 1/r2 light, let me cool off a bit", this might be a raytrace only bug, pretty minor really
I upgraded the project and now cannot access the project as it 100% crashes on material upgrade
Overall experience was pretty good, general wonkyness to be expected for using preview features but that last one reminds me of that old Belgium joke about the madman and the hammer.

 

I keep fixed fov right now, and model fpp guns in a way that minimalize tunneling effect, that occurs on long objects at higher fovs.

Collision with the world is handled regular way and gun is retracted by animation to avoid clipping though the walls.

Of course this are all workarounds at the moment - can be solved with custom passes (to implement proper cam stacking) but dont have man-power right now to do it.

I am switch volume profiles when going to/from menu and in-game views but biggest bummer right now is DoF effect influencing randomly hud elements, which does not look good at all and have no solution for it right now.

Problem is that you can do nice looking hud with post processing volume but theres no way to control it. You can either go with overlay camera for hud - no post processing at all, or screen space/world camera - you got post processing for hud but all of them, including effects you dont want, since its global.

Hehe, what do you want to know?

 

Me, if hobby projects count.

Its good. Its really stable which I like.

DBuffer decals are godsend for the game I'm building (which is the main reason I switched from built-in).
Lack of shaders can be tolerated by ASE or manual ports (managed to port CMU & SpeedTree on my own).

Graphic quality is better than with Lux shaders, so I'm happy about it.

There's lots of things that are useful for achieving high graphical fidelity.
And, there's also SRP batcher that skyrocketed my performance.

 

That might actually improve immersion, having your gun get pushed by environment, do you use that as a game mechanic?

seems like a pretty big oversight, what did Unity say about that?

"specifics?" was meant for @jjejj87 who had maddening bugs.

yep, production is production

what are you using those for? bullet hits?

really? I'm getting slightly slower performances, what's your project?

 

Blood splatter, projectile hit decals etc

First person shooter with quite large scenes scope (which I definitely need to lower, because I'll never finish it) plus some procedural stuff involved.

Also, stuff like trees and vegetation can be batched together as well. Which is really nice.

Instancing was fast, but SRP batches are faster.

Con of this - at the moment, there's no decent culling solution.
Hoping GDOC will get updated eventually to support HDRP.

So the actual frame rendering speed was improved.
(Bonus points - editor doesn't feels as sluggish anymore)

Quantity of stuff rendered is also increased (due to the lack of culling).

 

Things that drive me crazy.

1) HDRP crashes editor about 4~6 times a day. All changes are lost regardless of saving. The editor has to be closed and reopened to keep changes.

2) Custom pass bug is still here. It just doesn't work as expected yet.

3) HDRP Lit shader, when it comes to transparency, while superior to the built-in, still has a long way to go.

 

Pretty sure this is just a Unity thing, Ive experienced it before both standard and LWRP/URP.

Also, it seems not to happen as much with HDRP... at least right now, maybe because I am using shadergraph, the refresh of shaders causes a library refresh? I don't know, but I have had quite a few crashes, to find to my delight I hardly lost anything, compared to the past when I often lost quite a bit of progress.

 

I am pretty sure it is a HDRP thing. Also, I am seeing crashes every now and then, it crashes about 4~6 a day.

 

Maybe its worth checking what's causing them? What's in the editor log?

 

I remember we got that sort of problem in 4.3 and file>save project was the temporary cure.

 

Hi guys, now that almost a year has passed, any improved thoughts on HDRP? are any of you (still) using HDRP?

 

As for me, we're working on the other project right now and using URP, not FPS game. It seems more stable but it's a different use case. Internally we gave up HDRP, at least this year and will come back and check it 2022.

Apart from stability and most common features implemented, proper documentation and samples (no, outdated code do pock around on Github is NOT a sample) is the key enabler in adopting HDRP in the production project.

 

Has been anything released with HDRP? I'd like to play something polished made in HDRP to see how it feels.

 

@sergiusz308 Same here, I am using URP (which is very, very good now) for a VR project. I initially tried out and did some testing on HDRP (about a year ago) and it was littered with problems so I gave up and switched to URP.

I was going to start on a small side project and thought about HDRP because looks (lighting mainly) wise it is so much better than URP. You can get close results with URP but you have to use third-party stuff. I was hoping HDRP is fully ready by now and everything works as they should -just don't have the time to deal with added troubles of HDRP.

It seems like a good idea to wait little longer I guess.

 

Probably not what you're looking for, since my game is a solo project, but I've been pretty happy with HDRP. I'm certainly not pushing the absolute limits of the pipeline, though. The main issues I've faced have been issues with trails VFX and particles causing random crashes, and random crashes on certain GPU hardware (like Intel HD Graphics 600 series). In general, though, things feel pretty stable. There's a steam link in my signature if you want to see a trailer or try a demo of what I've made.

I'm not really sure what 3rd party stuff people feel they need. But again, one-man project, and I don't have the industry experience to know what kinds of AAA features people might be expecting from HDRP which aren't there yet.

 

Using HDRP for Buildmark ray tracing sandbox - good enough ). Currently the main problem *beside myself* is that texture streaming is not working with dynamically added content but this is the case for any rendering pipeline on Unity it seems/ray tracing denosier is far from perfect (but better than UnrealEngine one).

 

@dgoyette @Lex4art good to hear you're happy with it, throughout 2019/2020 HDRP was a mess in many areas and it’s good to hear now from people that they can push forward with their projects using it.


I wouldn't be that picky about it if my project would be a hobby one. For production though, then you got GDD to deliver, within set time-frame, the state of HDRP stack back then was not acceptable.


Once I finish current project I'd definitely give it a go once again, because it CAN look amazing. Thing is that Unity need to seriously catch up with resources and documentation that would enable people (outside of their dev team) to fully grasp it's potential.

 

I believe @Onat-H and his team uses HDRP for Harold Halibut game.

 

Oddworld Soulstorm, probably. A while ago they had a blog post showing their migration to HDRP. They most likely modified it a lot too, no way you can ship a game that has been in dev for that long using vanilla HDRP.

 

this is not normal at all.
It has never happened to me for the last year and a half that I only work with HDRP.

HDRP is maturing nicely but the performance may be an issue in the latest versions.

 

why?

latest version... you mean it's getting slower with new releases?

From what I'm seeing HDRP is ok for things that are not performance heavy like an adventure game.

 

The bigger your team and the bigger and longer your project is, the more disruptive updating Unity becomes. And whith both SRPs playing catch-up with basic features, you either update all the time or fork and add the features and fixes you need yourself. Specially if you're targeting consoles.

 

yup. from 2019 to 2020 I have observed 10fps difference on the same scene in 3 different projects.

And as KokkuHub said, it is necessary to update if you want to have some important basic features functioning the way they should in the first place. i.e. improved decals, but also improvments on lightmaps, proxies, etc.

Now... if this was the first 6 months or a year HDRP was out, it would be understandable and acceptable.
But after almost 3 years... it is not.

Still I will continue using HDRP as it gets the best visual results and it is very important in order to compete with creators and teams using UE4 when visual fidelity and excellent lighting is a requirement. In the freelance and creative agency world you can't afford offering subpar visuals. But when UE5 comes out later this year... I will most definitely re-evaluate my pipeline.

 

Well said! This was the exact though I had on URP also, but I am happy to say URP is now very robust. I chose URP because back then it was far more stable than HDRP. It seems HDRP is still lagging behind. Guess will have to wait another year or so.

P.s. Lately, I have been feeling the same with most things in Unity. Everything is in a perpetual preview (aka early access) state and after it is finally done, all the other systems have moved on to a new stage making this package obsolete (in a practical sense).

 

You seem to have a lot of production experience, I'd appreciate if you took a look at the quirk navigation list and update it with your findings. It'll sure help me chose for the next prod and I see that other people take a peek also, it cold help many who need to make the same tricky choice.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HwqJBj9J-2UFFxuxtSYL64hQ792gKrOD-Q7NLZqtEpM/edit?usp=sharing

What % slowdown is that?

Very good point. It seems that choosing the right version of unity and the packages has become in itself a full time job.

It has become a real problem but like everything in life there is a positive aspect to this: maybe it's a sign that we need to change the way we produce games. Instead of running after the latest glitz and convenience (I do that) which will break or slow down everything else as we've seen in 2020.2+, we need to scope our projects to match the most stable and feature full version and after bench tests stick to it like the big teams do. In my case I love jobs or at least burst so I can take off <2017 from the list.
A good example, and huge inspiration, is the small team that made Dyson Sphere Program. They use 2018.LTS with packages from 2014 - ancient. You can tell they scoped their project by matching systems and visuals to what they had.

 

it is about 15-20% slowdown depending on the scene. Which is an important amount.

 

Very true. But it does not apply to everyone.
If you are an indie developer developing your next game, and you don't do that, then you are doing something wrong.

If you are a studio that offers services to others, then chances are you can't.
If you do it, you will not be able to compete with studios using Unreal.
You will not be able to take visually complex projects. You will not be able to satisfy your clients who say "but we saw Rayreace in a video from Unity" In which case, over time, you run the risk to appear outdated, less informed, and lose clients. If you run a service studio or small agency, your clients apart from delivering on time, expect you to be on the cutting edge for their projects. It is part of their marketing too.

 

I believe this is using HDRP. It was shown @ unity showcase/GDC.

 

I think this applies to just about everyone, including indies. Industry is very competitive and if anything it is even harder for indies because unlike big teams, they have either very low or no marketing marketing resources available to them. I know, if the game is crap, it does not matter how good it looks, but visual fidelity goes a long way for indies to increase the appeal of the game to prospective players (the clients of the indies).

 

Perhaps you would think so but it is not necessarily true. Many people mistake appeal with fidelity. Indeed appealing visuals are key. But photorealistic fidelity is not.

A game can be presented in many different ways. A photorealistic approach is not necessary for most games. The proof is in the fact that the vast majority of games are not photorealistic. They do not even fall into stylized realism, Often they offer an illustrative style and even cartoony or completely cubist, or plain graphic design. Not only it is cheaper, it is also faster and more creative.


In agencies, especially these involved in ArchViz or VFX, Marketing, Automotive, and Digital Production that game engines push their way recently, photorealistic rendering is pretty much a one-way road.

 

Yes, it looks like it. And if one looks carefully, it also showcases some of the weaknesses of HDRP.

i.e. materials can have a very "plastic" look if you do not fine tune each and every thing, And even then sometimes, you can't avoid it. It appears to be an issue with how light interacts with shiny or semi-glossy surfaces. Volumetrics under certain circumstances, are not very flexible in terms of intensity tuning, lighting exposure has issues with high contrast bright areas. A bright sun can fill the sky and more.

 

Oh, I totally agree, in fact some of my favorite games have been stylized. I guess appeal is the right word, I was really referring to the lighting(?), you know that distinct look/quality you get with HDRP. In unreal you get this look too. Not sure what the exact term is but that's what I meant, not necessarily life like images. I will tell you, I have tried so many third party assets and other methods but nothing comes remotely close to the look you get with HDRP, because the way lighting works in HDRP.

 

The other thing is it's not even about realism sometimes, but features that are simply not present in URP, like decals. A stylized non-photorealistic game might need some of those features and then making the switch to (or starting from) HDRP is appealing. I in my naivete switched to HDRP in around 2018 (without really knowing how unity handles big additions like that) with the hopes of just upgrading as I go along. Welp it went about as good as you expect ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But with the new LTS version of the editor, I think I'll manually migrate that old project into a fresh one.

The documentation and knowledge about it are still kinda scarce though.

 

Decals are key in any game.
Any respectable game engine should offer Decals by default first thing.

That is not how the people programming Unity think. Sadly.
Perhaps because they have no clue what people who use game engines need.
Perhaps because they want to leave room to asset makers to make some buck.

If I am not mistaken there are at least a couple of solutions for URP Decals.

 

Unity has historically relied a lot on asset makers to fill the blanks. Barebones Unity would have became irrelevant a lot time ago. The problem is that with URP and HDRP that relationship became very rough as both were designed in ways that made life quite difficult for 3rd parties trying to extend them.

 

I know. And that is ok if you ask me.
All tools eventually mature as experienced users expect them to include the basics.

But Unity appears to not have clarified this question for themselves.
Or worse, they work not knowing it even exists.

 

I will just leave this here, might be handy to see what's coming up:
https://portal.productboard.com/8uf...s/3-universal-render-pipeline-previously-lwrp

@Double-V
It's seems that decals are planned for URP, but its been in planning phase for over year (maybe two), so, good luck. I am sure they have their priorities...

I have been using this and it seems to work well for decals in URP:https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/lux-urp-essentials-150355

 

Everyone has priorities.
As long as their priorities do not clash with the user's that's ok.
Our job is to make our products the best we can and be profitable.
Their job is to make sure they match our priorities and be profitable.

If not, users jump ship.

 

This thread is quite old but I'm sure some people might find this interesting.
HDRP is quite new in the grand scheme of things, and creating most games takes a long time, sometimes multiple years.
But we're now seeing some nice games coming out using HDRP, I'll list the popular ones.

Car Mechanic simulator 2021: Beautiful graphics, really good performance. You can also check their 2018 version, using built-in and compare graphics. Quite the big improvement in everything.

Road 96: Stylistic, beautiful open world graphics, really impressive. very good performance.

She Will Punish them: (NSFW) Good visuals, human avatars, Small 2 man indie team, big success considering team size.

Hardspace-shipbreaker: One of the earliest HDRP titles I know, also uses ECS I believe. Good graphics.

 

I also think the Blacksad: Under the Skin uses HDRP. I can't confirm it, but certain areas in the game had the patches of black boxes from NaN artifacts that HDRP was very prone a while back.

(although I could be wrong)

 

The game is also on Switch so I'm not sure. But maybe it's using the very early HDRP from before Unity dropped Switch support.

PPv2 is also subject to NaN issues, BTW, if you use 10-bit HDR framebuffers and push too bright values into the bloom post process.

(The Switch port runs horribly, tho).