Scalable graphics
Unity 2022.2 continues to bring additional features to enhance your workflows in both HDRP and URP render pipelines.
URP Forward+ Rendering
With the availability of Forward+ in URP, you can now incorporate a larger number of lights than the current limit of 8 lights per object in your scenes. Simultaneously, the performance of rendering in your projects will scale better as the number of lights and objects increases. You will also be able to select the Forward+ as a renderer of choice the same way you toggle between the current Forward and Deferred renderer.
URP Forward+ Rendering
URP Rendering Layers allow you to filter and configure how different objects get rendered and are affected by various rendering options in a Scene. Unity Layer Masks are shared and used for various purposes in a project, including physics and application logic. Rendering Layers allow for a better workflow of configuring rendering by separating rendering masking concerns from other masking behaviors in a project.
URP Rendering Layer support for Decals allows you to filter and configure how different objects get affected by different Decal Projectors in a Scene. Decals are useful for adding extra texture details to a Scene, especially to break the repetitiveness of materials and their detail patterns. A Decal Projector affects all Meshes in a scene by default, which might not always be desired. Decal layers allow you to decouple Meshes from specific Decal Projectors in your Scene.
energeticplasticchrysomelidURP Rendering Layer support for Decals; Assets used in the video: Multistory Dungeons, Medieval Cartoon Warriors
URP Level of Details (LOD) Cross Fade Support performs a smoother transition blending between the current mesh LOD and the next LOD based on the object’s distance to the camera.
LOD is a technique to reduce the GPU cost needed to render distant meshes. As the Camera moves, different LODs will be swapped to provide the right level of quality. Cross-fading allows smoother transitions of different LOD geometries and avoids the harsh snapping and popping that occurs during a swap.
unluckylikablefieldspanielURP Level of Details (LOD) Cross Fade Support
URP Built-in Converter Improvements provides tooling to assist you with upgrading your existing project(s) from the Built-in render pipeline. We are making various improvements to make the upgrade tooling more robust and useful to you. For 22.2 we have further improved the usability and performance of the converter based on the feedback we have received for projects with a larger number of assets.
HDRP Water System allows you to enhance your worlds by easily creating oceans, seas, lakes, or rivers with refractions, reflections, underwater effects, caustics, waves, and foam.
remorsefuldefensiveemuHDRP Water System
HDRP Path Tracing Denoising will provide users the choice between NVIDIA Optix™ AI accelerated denoiser and Intel® Open Image Denoise to achieve noise-free path-traced images, in situations where it simply wasn’t possible before or would have taken a lot more time with natural convergence of sample accumulation. Note that this is related to denoising for offline/interactive rendering, it does not make path tracing real-time for game experiences. You can find samples of the denoiser in action and share your feedback in the [Denoiser for HDRP path tracing ]( Denoiser for HDRP pathtracing page-2#post-8127488)discussion thread.
Adaptive Probe Volumes, continued development of this experimental feature delivers an initial implementation of light leaking prevention. This represents a step toward enabling probe-lit static geometry which makes it possible for Light Probes to replace some lightmaps for static objects. Additionally, GPU memory streaming is now supported which enables creators to build and run Scenes where lighting data assets don’t fit entirely in GPU memory. Finally we provide an experimental offering for baking multiple lighting scenarios, enabling creators to author and bake multiple lighting data sets, with the ability to blend between them during authoring and runtime.
Adaptive Probe Volumes
Volumetric Materials allow you to create procedural local fog using Shader Graph and HDRP.
Create advanced procedural fog and volumetric effects authored with Shader Graph and applied to any local volumetric fog component. This allows the creation of custom noise, fractals, ground fog effects, custom clouds, aurora borealis, sand storms, gas orbs, or volumetric ghosts. Local volumetric fog now offers different blending modes allowing to remove fog, for example in buildings or inside a vehicle.
heartfeltharmlessgreyhounddogVolumetric Materials
Full-Screen Master Node available for URP or HDRP allows Shader Graph to be used to create materials for full-screen effects, inside a custom pass or a custom post-process. You can easily retrieve scene color and buffer data to freely change colors, add highlights, or any other custom-made filters. Samples have been added to the HDRP package with different use cases of full-screen Shader Graph such as edge detection, night vision, or colorblindness filters.
Shadergraph can also now be used as well for Custom Render Texture. This allows easy authoring of dynamic textures that are key in the rendering of effects such as TV screens, dynamic snow or sand deformation, or even water interaction.
The high-end cinematic eye shader with caustics and high-quality PCSS area light shadows developed by our demo team and used in the Enemies short film are now integrated with HDRP.
graytimelyarabianoryxEye shader with caustics
PCSS shadow
Enemies image showing the cinematic eye shader with caustics and high-quality PCSS area light shadows
To showcase and onboard users to set up and use transparency, hair, full-screen shaders, or volumetric materials, our team of Technical Artists has built various sample scenes and shaders available in the HDRP package.
Transparency Samples
Hair Samples
For 2D graphics, the new Light Batching Debugger is now available to help creators identify problematic lights or sorting layers and have more control over performance. We also added VFX Graph integration with Shadergraph Sprite Lit and Custom Lit targets and support for Alpha Clipping with Shadergraph Sprite Lit, Unlit, and Custom Lit targets.
