Provide an option to easily Enable/Disable Raytrace without having to chase settings in the slow and complex Project Preferences menus chasing each and every option or having to create a brand new HDRP asset…
I can’t believe we are still made to struggle with that…
Also, DLSS, FSR, and STP are too complicated. They still require adjusting many configuration files. It would be best if they could be ‘unified’ in Unity.
I’m not sure I understand, there is an actual “real time raytracing” checkbox in the HDRP asset directly to disable ray tracing as a whole.
Also you can disable it by camera by using custom frame settings as well.
Can you explain more in details what you think woul be best?
Enabling Raytracing through the HDRP Wizard activates more than just the “Raytrace” checkbox in the HDRP asset.
Otherwise there would be no need for a completely separate section in the HDRP wizard. Everything would really be one click, which is the improvement I am talking about.
Also, a couple of these are not automatically turned on by the HDRP wizard. You have to go and manually turn them on for some strange reason.
But when you decide to disable the Raytrace features to optimize your scene, which is not rare at all, especially when you are working on pitches and need to show different Quality options, you have to chase these options one by one in the project settings. Or create a brand new HDRP asset which will also have you redo all the optimizations you had done so far. Creating a brand new default asset also may complicate things by leaving features turned on in the Global settings and off at the Quality settings which could confuse people in a larger team.
This improvement does not need to be on the HDRP asset itself, but on the HDRP Wizard.
At present, ray tracing settings are too complicated, and you need to go to each post-processing setting separately to set ray tracing, such as ray tracing screen space shadows, ray tracing screen space AO, etc.! It’s not easy to set up, and I want to make it a separate switch that can set and enable all ray tracing with one click, just like if you click to use the ray tracing switch in the game, instead of going to each setting to enable ray tracing mode, which is inconvenient!
Ideally, ray tracing provides a checkbox in the pipeline configuration that turns ray tracing on and off. Instead of switching pipeline assets and checking multiple boxes in a pipeline, all actual ray tracing settings should be centralized into a single post-processing setup. And provide some basic quality configurations! Instead of having to go to multiple post-processing settings like now!
I’ll try to explain how it’s was designed so hopefully it will help make sense.
What happens in the wizard is mostly enabling the things that are needed for raytracing to work. Once that is done, you can just disable the “Realtime Ray Tracing” checkbox in the rendering foldout of the HDRP asset. This is exactly why it’s there, to be able to enable and disable ray tracing at will.
In Unity HDRP (and in most pipeline) Ray Tracing is what is called an hybrid pipeline because not everything is ray traced, only certains effects use the power of raytracing (like shadows, reflections… etc). In addition, those effects are embeded in a fallback hierarchy. That means, if the machine on which the game is running isn’t compatible with raytracing, the effects won’t juste disappear but will fallback on the hierarchy (RT Shadows will become shadows maps, RT Reflection will become Screen space reflections… etc).
Moreover, in each HDRP asset (so in each quality setting if you prefer) you can add a specific volume. (in the volume foldout) to use different raytraced effect depending on your quality settings. Like, raytracing high will use the quality modes in reflection and GI and raytracing medium could use the perf mode etc…
If you want to see how to setup such a thing, download the HDRP Sample (in the HUB) and check how the quality settings are arranged, this is supposed to be a good example on how to setup quality settings and raytracing in HDRP. Basically, if you want to switch between the raytaced version and the raster one, it should just be as simple as switch quailty settings.
Hope that helps !
Actually, I understand what you’re saying, but it’s a lot of inconvenience in terms of actual use! The lack of support for ray tracing falling back to the default scheme should be an initial design issue in itself, and doesn’t need to be reflected in the UI! The tricky part of this is that I believe that a lot of times when people need a high-quality ray tracing preview, they just need a simple setup! Instead of checking the box once in the pipeline configuration and again in the post processing volume!
This is acceptable for those who are familiar with HDRP, and it is a disaster for some newbies!
It’s important to work out of the box
This is a very common mentality trap.
The problem here is not that we do not understand the logic, but that the way and the logic it was designed is flawed and convoluted, the opposite of user friendly, and needs some generous improvement.
That is the feedback.
Many developers try to convince the users that their design is not problematic. The problem is the users were not smart enough to understand the logic behind it (yes ,that is basically what the explanation amounts to, similar to mansplaining) when clearly the feedback shows it is not.
I understand what you are saying. And I’m not saying this is perfect either, in fact, it’s far from perfect, but as with a lot of things, we have to deal with decisions that are most of the time out of our hands: technical debt, retro-compatibility, forward-compatibility, refactors etc… so it’s all a matter of compromise based on context and budget.
HDRP is a complex machine that does wonders but it requires some time and has a steep learning curve, I’ll give you that. We did our best to make it as user friendly as possible, but we all have biases and different opinions and know that it can always be improved. In the end, it’s a matter of making a decision knowing it won’t be perfect. Aiming for perfect usually result in never delivering anything. Sometimes, it’s also easier to see how to make it better once it’s done as well, and sometime it’s already too late…
My last post was just about saying that what you want to do can be done and how to do in the current state, that’s it :).
I use HDRP almost exclusively for years. I could do this blindfolded. That is not the issue. It’s not a matter of understanding, or opinion, it is a matter of bad user experience. And most definitely as you said, for onboarding new users which is very important for adoption.
Usually when I mention something like this it is after years of use and patience hoping someone will get it fixed. Obviously, that did not happen.
Even the HDRP Wizard does not work properly.
The “automated” way that is meant to set it up for you with one click… asks you to make manual changes. I mean you do not need to be a genius to understand even this feature is flawed and broken.
And these are low hanging fruits that should be getting out of the user’s way first thing.
It is not creating a new RTX feature… it is about making a user friendly scripted UI feature that works.
Yes. It’s that simple.
As a noob, i can attest. I mean, not really a noob as I’ve been doing unity for a decade, but on and off every other year. Setting this up was a pain, and now i have to figure out how to turn it off to see how it would look without it. Also a pain.
