Unity Renderer is starting to feel old

Graphics Render Pipelines
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It’s becoming so obvious now when playing a game made in Unity. The Unity renderer just has such a ‘look’ about it it’s hard to unsee. It was cute back in 2012 but these days I think it really just tarnishes the image of any game made with the Unity.

I’m not impressed with APVs, the post process stacks or the tech demos (i.e. engine hacks) that are released every year to make Unity look passable.

I’ve managed to get around this by baking all of my shadows and material passes outside of unity in apps like blender and vray. This has limitations though because Unity’s light probe system is so inaccessible to developers and just doesn’t interface with anything. You’re kind of forced to use Unity lighting system, which is not based off any standard (intensity + distance) it’s essentially random.

I can’t help but feeling like Unity will look the way it does now forever because the core renderer will never be updated.

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Well yes, the built in render pipeline is old. It hasn’t been updated in years and will never be.

URP and HDRP are more tunable and have more options. Otherwise just write shaders or render features for what your project needs

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Yeah its not surprising that when you use the base rendering features, your game looks like everything else using the same base features.

If you want your game to stand out visually, you need to go above and beyond with a novel art style, use of shaders, etc.

This same phenomenon effects Unreal games as well, honestly.

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That screenshot is from Overcooked 2, released in 2018, probably mostly reusing tech from Overcooked from 2016. You have tagged this thread with 2019.4 and BIRP. So are you complaining that 8-10 year old games by a 2 person indie team that was targeting the Switch look outdated?

If you point at, idk, V Rising or some other modern Unity-made game using the currently available technology and say “hey, here’s how this looks like bad because of Unity”, then sure, there’s a conversation, but BIRP is dead technology and has been for a while.

Or, in other words, taking potshots at Unity 2019’s graphics is very 2019 of you :stuck_out_tongue:

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In addition to Baste’s point, Overcooked is extremely popular and very profitable so I’d argue that even though you’re saying that a ten year old renderer is outdated, it’s a fairly moot point since they’ve been met with overwhelming success.

Minecraft also looks utterly hideous, but frankly no one cares.

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…and meanwhile retro game developers are out there bending over backwards trying to make their games look like they were made in 1984.

George Orwell will be rolling in his grave..

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That’s why I only develop in HDRP now. It’s more work, sometimes difficult, but the result is worth it.

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