There are plenty of ways
you can optimize for better performance,
and better visual fidelity but each is going to be highly dependent
on the nature of your project, so make sure that
as you make changes you profile and test to confirm
that performance is actually improving. In this video, we’ll be going over
some of the ways to optimize the graphics performance
of the Universal Render Pipeline (URP). Manage Your Lighting
The URP has been built with optimized real-time
lighting in-mind, in the URP Forward Renderer
you can have up to eight real-time lights per object, and up to 256 real-time lights
per-camera on Desktop, and 32 real-time lights per camera
on Mobile and Switch. The URP also allows for configurable
per-object light settings inside of the pipeline asset for
even more control over your lighting. However, one of the best ways to improve
the performance of your scene is to bake your lighting
wherever possible. Real-time lighting can be expensive, and baking your lights can be
a great way to gain back performance. Especially if the lights in your scene
aren’t going to be moving. The process of baking,
essentially allows lighting data in your scene to be pre-rendered
into textures that are then re-projected onto
the geometry in your scene. By pre-rendering your lighting data
to baked textures, you can save valuable rendering time, and increase the performance of your
scene as the lighting textures can be batched
into a singular draw call, and don’t need
to continuously be calculated; this is especially useful
if your scene uses multiple lights. Another great reason
to bake your lighting is that it allows you to render bounced
or “indirect” lighting in your scene, and improve the visual quality
of your scene. This is known as Global Illumination, and is a process that simulates
rays of light bouncing around your environment,
and illuminating other nearby objects
with the bounced light rays. When baked, areas of shadow in your
scene will receive the bounced light,
and will become illuminated. It can be subtle,
but this technique spreads the light around your scene
more realistically, and improves its overall appearance. To get started baking your lighting,
you first need to mark your lights as Baked. You can do this by selecting
the lights in your scene, and choosing Baked
from the Mode dropdown. Make sure that any geometry
in your scene is marked as Static. This will allow it to be included
in the lightmapping calculations, and contribute towards the bounced light
from the Global Illumination. It’s worth noting that,
you can also change lightmapping settings on individual object meshes, by selecting the GameObject
in the Inspector, and adjusting the settings
on the Mesh Renderer in the Inspector. This can be a great way
to improve baking times, as you can reduce the settings
for distant or smaller objects. Once your scene is set up for baking,
open the lighting window by choosing Window > Rendering
> Lighting, and create a new
Lighting Settings Asset. Then set up your Lightmapping
settings using the Progressive Lightmapper,
and choose Generate Lighting. When you’re setting up
your lightmapping settings, you might find that it will take
a long time to bake. It’s advisable to start
with a low lightmap resolution, and size while you’re iterating
your scene during development. It's also possible to visualize
lighting data in the Scene view by using the draw mode dropdown Then, when you’ve finished working
on your scene, gradually increase the resolution,
size, and sample settings for something more suitable
for your target appearance. You’ll want to find a resolution
that allows these settings to be no higher than they need to be, as lower resolution and lightmap sizes will help lower the texture
memory requirement. Use Light Probes Light Probes sample the lighting data
in your scene during baking, and allow the bounced light information
to be passed onto dynamic objects that may move or change
such as characters or vehicles. This helps them to blend into,
and feel more natural in, the baked lighting environment. Here you can see the difference
between how our character looks with and without light probes
active in our scene. To add light probes into your scene,
simply choose Create -> Light -> Light Probe Group. Then position your probes
into the scene, and choose
the edit light probes option. We can then select a light probe,
and duplicate it using the button in the Inspector
or CTRL + D on our keyboard in windows, or CMD+D on
Mac to begin positioning our probes. Generally, it’s worth placing probes
wherever there is a shift in lighting. So, place them close to shadowed areas or areas where lighting colors
change more frequently. Then, just bake your lighting again to see the effect
of your newly placed probes. If you have auto-generate enabled
in the Lighting Settings Panel, your scene should automatically update
to compensate for the probes. Use Reflection Probes The final way we can use
lighting settings to optimize our scene is through the use
of reflection probes. Reflection probes are a way of projecting
parts of the environment onto nearby geometry to create more realistic looking reflections
in our scene. By default, Unity will use the skybox as the reflection texture
on your objects. But, reflection probes
allow your reflections to more closely match
their surroundings. Notice here how more of the lighting
in our scene is reflected onto the edges
of our objects, and smooth parts of our character. To create reflection probes
simply choose Create > Light > Reflection Probe. Next, position and size
your reflection probes into areas of your scene
where reflections are needed. Then to bake your reflections, simply choose the Bake Reflection Probes
setting in the Lighting Window. If auto-generate is enabled, Reflection
Probes will be baked automatically. Be sure to experiment
with the resolution of your probes using the Resolution dropdown. Higher resolutions will mean
higher quality reflections, which are good for objects that
may be viewed close up. However, if your camera is further away, lowering the resolution will help
keep your scene optimized by storing less information in memory. Manage your Camera Settings The URP includes ways
to optimize your camera, by disabling unwanted renderer processes
on your cameras. This can be extremely useful
if you’re targeting both higher end, and lower end devices in your project. By disabling things
like post-processing, shadow-rendering or depth-texture you can remove
any potentially expensive behaviorrs on lower-quality settings,
and increase performance. Another great way
to optimize your camera is through the use
of Occlusion Culling. By default, the camera in Unity
will always draw everything within the camera’s view frustum including geometry that may be hidden
behind walls or other objects. Drawing Geometry is quite expensive, and there’s no point in drawing objects
that the player won’t be able to see. This is where Occlusion Culling
can be extremely useful. By baking Occlusion Data,
Unity can ignore any parts of your scene which are blocked from view
of the camera, and therefore increase performance by reducing the amount of scene geometry
being drawn per frame. To enable Occlusion Culling
in your scene, you’ll need to mark any geometry
as either Occluder Static or Occludee Static. Once your geometry is marked,
open the Occlusion Window by going to Window > Rendering > Occlusion Culling.
Then, click Bake. Now Unity will use the occlusion data
when rendering, and not render any geometry that is within the Camera’s view frustum but
blocked by another object. This can be previewed in the Scene view
during Play mode by selecting a camera,
and enabling the Visualisation Tab. Manage your Render Pipeline Settings The URP is designed to support
deployment onto multiple target platforms and devices. For that reason, the URP Asset contains multiple settings
that we can control to increase and improve performance
in our game. You can view the Render Pipeline Asset
by selecting it in the project window. Or by choosing Edit >
Project Settings > Quality and selecting the Render Pipeline Asset. Each Quality Tier in the project
can hold a different Render Pipeline Asset.
So, you can create different Render Pipeline Assets
to customize the renderer settings, and control how your game performs
at each Quality Tier. Many of these settings will impact
the overall performance, and visual quality of your scene. It is worth experimenting with them,
in order to get the best results for your project, but generally, if you’re looking
to gain performance it is worth reducing shadow resolution, and Distance as much as possible,
as well as, disabling any features
your project isn't using such as the Depth Texture
or Opaque Texture. Similarly, enabling the SRP batcher, will enable the new method
of batching in the URP The SRP Batcher will automatically
batch together meshes that use a compatible shader. So, if you have lots of dynamic objects
in your scene, this can be a useful way
to gain some performance. The SRP Batcher has been
designed specifically for improved batching in the URP. If you’d like to read more on optimizing
your settings using Shader Stripping, and the SRP Batcher,
we’ve posted a link in the description down below. Use The Frame Debugger Finally, for a better understanding
of what’s happening during rendering of your scene
you can make use of both the Frame Debugger,
and the Profiler. For additional information
in the Frame Debugger, You can adjust the Debug level
on your URP Asset Note that adjusting this,
may reduce performance. So it is recommended to turn it off
when not profiling The Frame Debugger gives you a breakdown
of all of the draw calls your game makes before rendering
the final image, and can be a great way
to figure out why certain frames are taking longer to draw than others, or help to identify
why your scene’s draw call count is so high in the first place. The Frame Debugger can be found by going
to Window > Analysis > Frame Debugger. When your game is playing,
select the Enable button to get a breakdown of the scene
at each point in the rendering cycle. This is also where you can see
any Renderer Features you may have active
in your Pipeline Asset, and identify the impact
your custom features may be having on the rendering loop. For more information
on Renderer Features and how to use them,
follow the link below. Use the Profiler Similarly, The Profiler is a great way
to figure out how long your project takes
to complete a frame cycle. It gives an overview of rendering,
memory, and scripting. The Profiler can help identify scripts that are taking a long time
to complete, and give you an indication
of potential bottlenecks in your code. The Profiler can be found
by going to Window > Analysis > Profiler. When Play-mode is active,
the window will give you an overview of the overall
performance of your game. You can also pause the live view,
and use the Hierarchy mode to get a breakdown of the Time taken
to complete a single frame, and each call Unity has made
during that frame. These are just a few of the ways
you can optimize your scene to increase both performance
and fidelity. For more information on ways
you can optimize your project and for more information on the URP,
follow the link below. Thanks for watching.
