Scalable rendering
In Unity 2023.1, we continue to bring additional features (for more on our vision, read our Games Focus blog post on scalable rendering) to enhance render quality and feature coexistence in both HDRP and URP.
URP – Temporal anti-aliasing
Temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) in URP is an upgrade from the Built-in Render Pipeline implementation that uses 16 bit floats for optimized performance. It offers multiple quality level options to optimize performance from mobile to desktop and consoles, leveraging motion vectors to reduce aliasing problems such as pixelated and flickering edges.
unkemptwarmheartedhornsharkURP – Temporal anti-aliasing
URP – FXAA Quality Improvements
Access improved edge anti-aliasing while retaining better texture quality compared to previous versions. Performance requirements are expected to be unchanged, output quality is now similar to the low/medium SMAA presets while still having better performance.
URP – High Dynamic Range Display Output
High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays are display devices capable of reproducing images in the higher range of difference in luminance closer to natural lighting conditions. HDR output allows for better preservation of the contrast and quality of the linear lighting renders and HDR images displayed on these devices. 2023.1 introduces URP support for HDR tonemapping and output when targeting desktop and console platforms, with mobile support coming soon.
SRP – Screen Space Lens Flares
You can now add lens flares generated from all highlights visible on screen (direct, indirect, emissive surfaces, specular highlights) in just a few clicks with a single post-process volume.
Compatible with both HDRP and URP, this feature can be used at the same time and complement SRP lens flares, which offer more advanced artistic control on lights lens flares, but can only be performed on predefined light sources (directional, point and spot lights).
conventionalfaithfulindigowingedparrotSRP – Screen Space Lens Flares
HDRP – Water System functional and visual improvements
In 2022.2, we introduced the first-ever native water system in Unity. That initial release was focused on rendering to simplify adding water surfaces to an environment. In 2023.1, we’re focusing on enabling finer authoring of water to better integrate with the world and gameplay.
whitepalatableclownanemonefishHDRP – Water System functional and visual improvements sample 1
Water Excluder dynamically removes water from inside a boat or cave in the middle of an island, and Water Deformer deforms water locally for deformations such as around a ship in movement, waves near the shores, waterfalls, or vortexes. Foam Generator allows you to simulate white water for a boat trail or around rocks in open oceans, and Current maps creates local currents by both managing surface waves to follow the currents and the water query API to allow for objects to drift. We also added a Water Line to underwater rendering when the camera is crossing the water surface.
breakablegoldendiplodocusHDRP – Water System functional and visual improvements sample 2
HDRP – Transparency improvements
You can now add an extra optional pass to compute the thickness of transparent objects at runtime to get more accurate refraction and transparency rendering with improved performance of subsurface scattering pass for high resolution.
HDRP – Transparency improvements
Ray Tracing API and HDRP features out of preview
After recent stability and performance improvements to DirectX 12 and ray tracing, as well as increased compatibility with the engine’s existing feature set and consoles support, the Ray Tracing API and HDRP’s ray-traced effects such as ray-traced shadows, reflections, AO, Global Illumination, path tracing, and recursive rendering are officially out of preview.
We also added VFX Graph ray tracing support, allowing the authoring of complex particle effects that are compatible with HDRP’s ray-traced effects, as well as terrain heightmap support to use ray tracing on large worlds.
Start experimenting now with ray tracing, installing the HDRP Sample Scene template in the Hub, which has been updated to provide new ray tracing quality settings.
HDRP – Specular Fade Mode for Lit and StackLit HDRP shaders
Specular light can now completely be faded when using a specular color workflow using the HDRP/Lit and HDRP/StackLit shaders by toggling a new option that can be found in the HDRP Global Settings under Miscellaneous/Specular Fade.
URP and HDRP – Unification of Light and Decal layers
Light Layers and Decal Layers are now managed similarly in both HDRP and URP.
In HDRP, they will now share the first 16 rendering layers instead of using eight separate bits each.
Additionally, an option was added in the HDRP Asset to allow access to a full-screen buffer containing the rendering layers masks of rendered objects. That buffer can be sampled from the Shader Graph through the HD Sample Buffer node and used to implement custom effects like outlining objects on a specific rendering layer.
URP and HDRP – Adaptive Probe Volumes
For Light Probe-lit objects, Probe Volumes enable you to set up and iterate on Light Probe placement more quickly. The visual quality of Light Probe-lit objects is higher and affects Volumetric Fog and particles. In some scenarios, Probe Volumes also enable you to indirectly light static objects, and bake sets enable you to set up and blend between different Light Probe-lit lighting scenarios. At runtime, GPU memory footprint is reduced by streaming the probe data.
With the 2023.1 release, the core functionality and user experience of Adaptive Probe Volumes are improved and officially out of preview.
We have also implemented support for Adaptive Probe Volumes in URP. Note that this iteration will not support Lighting Scenario Blending, and may not yet be optimized for performance, especially when running on lower-end platforms.
homelydeterminedemeraldtreeskinkURP and HDRP – Adaptive Probe Volumes
Global Illumination – New Light Baking Architecture
Baked GI is now using our new LightBaker v1.0 architecture for on-demand bakes. The purpose of this new architecture is to provide you with a more predictable and stable light baking experience. Note that Auto mode still uses the progressive baking feature.
When baking with the GPU backend in on-demand mode, you can use the Baking Profile in the Lighting window to select the tradeoff between performance and GPU memory usage. On-demand mode no longer tracks scene changes while baking, so a bake is not automatically restarted when a change is made to the scene while baking. This makes the Editor more responsive while baking larger projects.
Global Illumination – New Light Baking Architecture [
This image uses the ArchVizPRO Interior Vol.9 assets from the Unity Asset Store.]
Shader System – Dynamic Shader Loading
Dynamic Shader Loading provides you with additional user control over shader loading behavior and memory usage. This optimization enables the streaming of shader data chunks into memory and evicts shader data that is no longer needed at runtime based on a user-controlled memory budget. This significantly reduces shader memory usage on platforms with limited memory budgets when using the new Shader Variant Loading Settings (under Project Settings > Player).
Shader System – Variant Keyword Prefiltering
Variant Keyword Prefiltering introduces the early exclusion of multi_compile keywords based on Prefiltering Attributes driven by render pipeline settings. This greatly reduces the amount of variants being enumerated for potential stripping and compilation, significantly shrinking shader processing time for both clean and warm project builds. For more information, see the official blog post.
VFX Graph – Volumetric Fog Output
This new output in VFX Graph allows you to inject particles into HDRP’s Volumetric Fog to generate clouds, smoke, mist, fire effects, or to make Volumetric Fog more dynamic and procedural. Blend modes allow you to mix particles in different ways with the existing fog (add, multiply, min-max), in order for particles to add, remove, or combine with existing fog.
