Feb 21
How to Install the Universal Render Pipeline
Hello again! Today we’re going to working the URP, or Universal Render Pipline, into our project so that we can use some tools we otherwise won’t be able to. These tools will help us enhance our project’s appearance. BUT before we get started let’s export our work so far to protect the time we’ve put into it. You might even decide to go with another pipeline. So this gives us a save point basically.
Right click your scene in the assets window and click Export Package. A new window will pop up and it will contain everything we’ve added to this project and scene. Click export at the bottom to make an export package of all that data.
Now that we have our save point, let’s talk a bit about pipelines. There are three that we might move into. Standard Rendering Engine, Universal Rendering Pipeline, and HDR(High Definition Rendering) Pipeline. The URP is the finalized out of beta version of the lightweight rendering pipeline. Basically everything Unity 2019.3 and up will use this. Standard render pipeline will eventually be phase out. It’s optimized to run better, anywhere from double to four times better. The HDR is the other pipeline and is for high end graphics for great fidelity. If you’re going to be ignoring some things you could focus on like shadows, volumetric lights, ambient occlusion, things that are sorted per item URP won’t bother you at all. If you really want to push the limits HDR is for you.
We’re going to look at both! But let’s start with URP first.
Now instead of trying to upgrade our current project let’s make a new project and import the save point that we just made. Hop into your Unity Hub and make a new project. You can name this something similar like Control_RoomURP. Find the URP option and select it.
Doing it this way will let us make a separate project for HDRP later down the road. Once you’ve got a new project started it will look like this:
Now find your exported package and drag it right into your project assets window.
Once you clean up your assets how you like, let’s jump into our Control_Room scene that we important and…. oh…. no…. what is this?!
Its actually OKAY, nothing to worry about, we just need to update what the editor is rendering. If you check the shaders on objects, you’ll notice they just say “standard” and are this bright pink monstrosity. We just need to update this to the URP. Go to Edit at the top of the screen > Render Pipeline > Universal Render Pipeline > Update Project Materials to UniversalRP Materials and this should happen:
If anything is still pink, click on the individual object and adjust it’s shader manually. You now have your scene in a URP ready project! You can basically repeat the same process to put your scene in HDRP also. In our next post we’ll look at how to add a custom skybox. I hope you learned as much as me today and I’ll see you again soon!
