Any advice on how I can bring in the nicer lighting system? Is this possible without choosing HDRP or URP? I’m a bit stuck for upgrading due to some of the old models I use and so I’m trying to keep everything simple until I can be sure which pipeline to upgrade to in future.
I’ve seen some plug ins on the store which could do the work. Although, I am aware HDRP has volumetric lighting, it’s difficult to commit as it will be locked to HDRP if I choose URP in future.
Thanks for any help.
Do you mean built-in? There are plenty of volumetric lighting extensions for built-in on the asset store. Also, I found this free one that I’ve used before:
https://github.com/SlightlyMad/VolumetricLights
Thanks so much. Do they work just as well, or better than the Unity one in HDRP?
I’ve never used HDRP, so I don’t know. So far, I’ve been kind-of ignoring the SRPs. I don’t really see anything that compels me to switch away from the built-in renderer just yet. I have tried URP. It looks about the same as the built-in renderer but is still missing some features that the built-in renderer has.
HDRP just looks intimidating at this point. I don’t have the time or skills to create the sort of art assets that Unity uses in their fancy demos.
Meanwhile I’m the exact opposite. I’ve worked on a project that involved HDRP and I can’t imagine anything that would compel me to switch back to the built-in renderer. Some things can’t be done with it but the same is true for built-in, and while HDRP will eventually get them built-in is in maintenance mode and will never see new features.
Speaking of features the biggest for me is the much more advanced upscalers. Built-in is restricted solely to a low quality upscaler called Catmull which looks awful with anything lower than a 90% resolution scale. By comparison the DLSS 2 (and eventually FSR 2 when it’s available) of HDRP looks fantastic even with a 50% scale.
A 50% scale means an internal resolution of 540p when outputting 1080p. It’s a tremendous performance boost.
URP is intended almost entirely for low end devices or devices where performance is critical like VR. While they labeled it “universal” that’s only in the sense that it will run on anything not that it’s universally useful. If you’re looking at high end features wondering which pipeline to choose the answer is HDRP.
Thanks, I’m keeping options open. If I can get this project as good as possible I would really want it to work on Android if possible. I have found that I can always revert back from HDRP, I have URP installed but too many of the assets I use end up being Pink coloured. I’d really want Volumetric lighting, it does look beautiful. I’ll have to consider some options.
Hm. Maybe I should start a new project and start playing around with it.
High-end graphics have never really been a priority for me, but there is a side of me that likes the sparklies.
Or for PC, if you want a good framerate across a wider range of devices.
Not everyone has a beast of a GPU, especially these days, with high-end cards costing around £1000 after a couple of years of severe shortages.
And there’s a lot of gamers who won’t have DLSS-compatible cards.
There are definitely a lot of people on older hardware but I think people forget that NVIDIA is 80% of the gaming market so even if most people don’t have it now it’s only a matter of time until most people do have it.
That said for people who don’t buy NVIDIA hardware DLSS is not the only upscaler available. Unity has their own universal upscaler available, AMD’s FSR 2.0 should be available before too long, and Intel is developing their own solution called XeSS.
Yes, there are minimum hardware requirements for every currently available upscaler including the much simpler FSR 1.0, but that’s the nature of the gaming industry. While I loved my former GPUs I eventually had to move on from them because they became outdated. Eventually upscalers will be common place.
You don’t need a beast of a GPU to use HDRP. While it might look like that at first glance that’s only because the developers of the pipeline have most of the settings defaulting to their highest options. The Color Buffer Format, for example, defaults to R16G16B16A16 which is double the memory usage of R11G11B10.
Yes, it’s possible without choosing HDRP/URP, try Unreal Engine. Lumen GI works for volumetric fog as well, they look fantastic!