What does CameraType do, and why does HDRP not work on Preview?

MechaWolf99 · October 22, 2024, 5:11pm

I had to make a custom previewer for the editor a while ago. And came across CameraType, and was wondering what it actually does, and why HDRP didn’t work with it when the CameraType.Preview was used.
(This was some time ago, so maybe HDRP does work with it now? But I stil would like to know what it actually does!)

antoinel_unity · October 23, 2024, 1:11pm

Hey, CameraType describes the mode of the current camera. Game, and SceneView are self-explanatory, Relfection is for when the camera is used to capture a reflection probe or a planar probe and Preview is used for any other HDRP rendering in the editor like material preview, prefab previews, etc.

Internally when the preview mode is set, we disable a bunch of features like post processes, etc that could get in the way of viewing the content.

HDRP should work well in preview mode as long as it’s in the editor. What is important is to make sure that an HDAdditionalCameraData component is attached to your camera like in this script:

github.com

Unity-Technologies/Graphics/blob/master/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition/Editor/RenderPipeline/Camera/HDCameraPreview.cs

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.Rendering.HighDefinition;

namespace UnityEditor.Rendering.HighDefinition
{
    class CamerasOverlayCallbacks : Editor
    {
        [InitializeOnLoadMethod]
        static void InitializeCameraPreview()
        {
            UnityEditor.CameraEditorUtils.virtualCameraPreviewInstantiator = () =>
            {
                var camera = EditorUtility.CreateGameObjectWithHideFlags("HDRP Preview Camera", HideFlags.HideAndDontSave, typeof(Camera)).GetComponent<Camera>();

                camera.enabled = false;
                camera.cameraType = CameraType.Preview;

                var additionalData = camera.gameObject.AddComponent<HDAdditionalCameraData>();
                additionalData.isEditorCameraPreview = true;

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What does CameraType do, and why does HDRP not work on Preview?

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