I have done solid research on this, but found conflicting information/opinions about this topic, also many of those might be outdated as those pipelines changed a lot during past year.
Key information on my project:
-Most of the assets I will be using are from store (also many of those havent been upgraded since introduction of SRPs)
-I am experienced in Unity (but havent done many things in it during past year)
-My game will be top-down, realistic (not cartoony) graphics with lot of particles, few models and small scenes - something similar to Diablo games, only constrained in small arenas
-Most of the work on project will be probably done by me alone
-The project will be PC only
Upgrading an existing project to the URP and HDRP is a relatively straightforward process. You just need to configure the pipeline, configure the scene volumes, and replace the shaders on your assets with the appropriate alternative included with the pipeline (eg standard shader is replaced with HDRP/Lit).
If your game only uses standard materials, sure. But if you have any handwritten shaders, it’s anything but straightforward because those would need to be recreated in shader graph (which is not always possible).
How custom are we talking about here? Because while @Neto_Kokku is correct in that some shaders can’t be replicated with Shader Graph the number of those you can’t make is far smaller than the number you can. If you don’t know the answer to that then the built-in pipeline is definitely the way to go.
I think he meant that the custom shaders cant be autoupdated and it have to be done manually one by one.
My custom shaders arent that complicated, but models I have seem use them. They are there because a lot of content creators on asset store used their own shaders, especially in times before standard shader become available in Unity.
If we forget built-in renderer for a moment since even if I start with it, I might upgrade so SRP, what do you think that will suite my project better - URP or HDRP?
If you want to port your game over to Switch, URP. Initially HDRP supported Switch, but Unity dropped support.
Also, it’s important to note that, if you go the SRP route you must be open to use the very latest Unity version (not LTS) and update mid project, because even though the SRPs are packages they are tied to specific Unity versions, so any new features added to them won’t make it for Unity versions other than the latest alpha /beta.
I just want my game too look as best as it can (volumetric fog might be nice and is hdrp only I think).
When I have been researching this, I read many things like:
-HDRP is only for bigger teams as you need to have dedicated people tuning assets to it
-URP is for mobile and web, HDRP is for PC and console
-You should work in URP/HDRP as Unity goes for these as new standard and built-in will become obsolete
-URP/HDRP is not production ready as there are still key features missing
-URP/HDRP requires extra maintenance costs, as it is constantly updated and you need to tune your project constantly to updates
-You should switch to URP/HDRP as it is strictly better than old renderer
And that is why I am quite confused. A lot of people with different/conflicting information. Some of those might be also obsolete.
Well, if you are using Assets from the Asset Store, have you done any research to see which SRP they are compatible with, if any? This might make the decision for you if you are using assets that only support URP or HDRP, or only built in. We cannot tell you which version you need as we don’t know which features of URP you need.
Here, maybe this video will help you decide. I haven’t watched it but I’ve watched some of Brackey’s other videos and they are good.
State of Unity??..So Dam Confusing, Community can’t even give a simple answer to a simple question. What pipeline what an elusive question! Does any one know?..
We gave answers. Built-in pipeline for people who are just getting started, for people who are making extensive use of the Unity Asset Store, and for people who have shaders that cannot be easily recreated in the SRP. As for choosing an SRP you simply need to make a list of the features that you want and then pick the pipeline that is the closest match.
I apologize for resurrecting this almost-necrothread, but what I want to add is an evolving improvement in the situation of porting some published art to SRP.
In general, I agree with @KokkHub, but some custom shaders are an exception. I’ve had very good success migrating Amplify Shader Editor (ASE) shaders between pipelines. It’s a manual process, but it’s been smooth for the most part. I mention this because some of the art assets I’ve purchased come with custom shaders that were made in ASE by the publisher, so those have been easier for me to migrate. The reason I’m appending to this thread is that this is a trend that seems to have emerged recently.
The other thing to be aware of with HDRP is the difficulty of using SpeedTree assets in HDRP. Unless it’s changed recently, SpeedTree and Unity are still back-and-forth about when and how those shaders will be ported to HDRP. There is an open source ASE HDRP shader for SpeedTree, from VergilUa, which I’ve been using with good results. It had some minor issues with Unity 2020.1 (I haven’t yet tested in 2020.2) which I’ve resolved locally last week, but I’m waiting to contrib my patch upstream until I’ve finished testing in my own project.
Thanks! I have a license for Vegetation Studio, but just got it recently (picked it up during the last sale), and I didn’t realize its shaders are ASE-built. That’s great news for my future projects. The project where I’m using VergilUa’s shader was completed earlier this year, but I’m extracting and packaging pieces of that for reuse – so I’ll look at moving to Vegetation Studio for the next iteration of that work.