Is there a plan to add hand-coded shader features in the SRPs? Ideally a framework like the BIRP surface shaders would be great, but even just having some sort of unified shader code API would be great.
As of now, writing shaders for renderer features in URP or custom passes in HDRP are vastly different, and some well-documented streamlined approach would be great.
That also goes for object-shaders. SG might be getting better with each version but there’s still limitations by-design compared to what is (or was) possible through hand-coded shaders.
As Remy mentioned above, we are soon introducing a new text-based shader authoring workflow, called 'Block Shaders", in order to streamline the creation of SRP compatible lit shaders (in a similar fashion to BiRP Surface Shaders) as well as any other type of shader.
Similarly to Surface Shaders, Block Shaders will allow you to implement the surface description of a lit shader - without having to modify any complex shader source.
In the following days, we will share a public announcement here in the forums with a lot more details, code examples, as well as a public demo for everyone to actually try!