Scalable rendering
GPU Lightmapper
[GPU Lightmapper]( Progressive GPU Lightmapper preview page-16#post-8880558) is now out of preview and allows for much faster baking of lightmaps and probes as compared to the CPU Lightmapper. This baking backend will help with the iteration speed of baking in your projects, especially when larger scenes and a larger number of probes or higher resolution of lightmap textures are involved.
Adaptive Probe Volumes
To improve iteration times, expand feature parity with HDRP in URP, and improve runtime performance of Adaptive Probe Volumes in URP on mobile devices, we have delivered these improvements with the 2023.2 release:
- HDRP Light probe data streaming from Disk: Without disk streaming, the CPU pool may not be able to accommodate all probe data in large scenes that are streamed from the CPU to the GPU. This feature pulls probe data from disk in time to be used for runtime and can now be found as an option on the HDRP assets to enable disk streaming per quality level.
- URP Per-Vertex Quality Settings: You can now set a per-vertex quality level for indirect lighting from light probes so that light probe-lit environments on mobile devices can run more efficiently.
Limitations for APV in URP that continue to apply: Lighting Scenario Blending and Lighting Normalization for Reflection probes are not supported, and performance on mobile may still require further optimization.
Interactive GI-related Scene View Draw Modes
Iteratively authoring and troubleshooting baked lighting data is an important use case for creators using Static Global Illumination (GI). For this reason, we have added a new “Interactive preview” functionality to various GI-related Scene View Draw Modes, replacing “Auto-mode” for light baking.
UGUI Support for Shader Graph
Shader Graph now has sub-targets for Canvas in both URP and HDRP. This means UI artists can create custom shaders for their UI elements using Shader Graph. This gives non-coders the freedom to define the overall look and style of UI elements, create animated UI effects, and define custom button states - all while using less texture memory.
VFX Graph Templates & Wizard
Use the template window to create a VFX Graph asset with a predefined effect. You can use these templates as a starting point for your own effects. Each template has a description and an image to describe its behavior so you can easily choose the one that will fit your needs.
VFX Graph URP Decals
URP Lit decal output is now supported in VFX Graph, making it possible to create effects like splashes or impacts.
VFX Graph Six Way Lighting compatibility with URP and Shader Graph
In 2022 LTS, we introduced Six-way lighting, a set of tools and features to bake lightmaps and simulate the lighting in sprite sheets at runtime, allowing you to create customizable effects like smoke, clouds, or steam that work under different lighting conditions. First available only for HDRP, it is now available for URP in 2023.2 using the Lit Output in VFX Graph. Using Shader Graph, you can now also create custom six-way lit effects that work across pipelines.
VFX Graph Access to URP’s camera Depth and Color Buffers
Already available in HDRP, it will now be possible for URP users to sample the depth and color buffers allowing depth-based collision or spawning particles with the color of the world, useful for effects like rain, impacts, dissolve effects, or growing procedural vegetation.
URP Object Motion Blur and VFX Graph URP Motion Vector Support
A new option called Camera And Objects in the Motion Blur effect allows leveraging motion vectors to blur objects moving faster than the camera’s exposure time. VFX Graph particles can now as well generate motion vectors and hence be motion blurred as well as being taken into account by systems like Temporal Anti-Aliasing.
HDRP Path Tracer support for Decals
Decal projectors, which enable projecting specific materials onto the scene to add details like stamps, water puddles, dirt, engravings, and more without changing the ground or props materials, are now supported by the HDRP Path Tracer (except emission which is not supported).
HDRP Shader Graph Decals compatible with transparent objects
Decals created with Shader Graph can now affect transparent objects to build procedural effects like raindrops or ripples on water, as well as custom engravings or dirt effects on glass and more.
HDRP Night Sky and improved volumetric clouds self-shadowing
To facilitate time of day support, the HDRP physical sky, which was already able to procedurally generate a daylight cycle based on physical properties of the atmosphere and planet, now has support for the night cycle with stars and celestial bodies like the moon. The visual fidelity of volumetric clouds has also been improved using beer shadow maps to evaluate self-shadowing.
HDRP Speedtree visual improvements
SpeedTree trees can now look even better in HDRP, leveraging the new Transmission Mask to apply subsurface scattering only on leaves. HDRP/Nature/SpeedTree8.shadergraph uses the Subsurface Map for the Transmission Mask node to remove the unintended light transmission from tree barks and twigs. This also fixes the overly bright billboard lighting not matching the 3D geometry’s lighting.