Upgrading to version 12 of the Universal Render Pipeline

This page describes how to upgrade from an older version of the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) to version 12.0.x.

For information on converting assets made for a Built-in Render Pipeline project to assets compatible with URP, refer to the page Render Pipeline Converter.

Upgrading from URP 11.x.x

The Forward Renderer asset is renamed to the Universal Renderer asset. When you open an existing project in the Unity Editor containing URP 12, Unity updates the existing Forward Renderer assets to Universal Renderer assets.
The Universal Renderer asset contains the property Rendering Path that lets you select the Forward or the Deferred Rendering Path.
The method ClearFlag.Depth does not implicitly clear the Stencil buffer anymore. Use the new method ClearFlag.Stencil.
URP 12 implements the Render Pipeline Converter feature. This feature replaces the asset upgrade functions that were previously available at Edit > Render Pipeline > Universal Render Pipeline > Upgrade...

Upgrading from URP 10.0.x–10.2.x

The file names of the following Shader Graph shaders were renamed. The new file names do not have spaces:
Autodesk Interactive
Autodesk Interactive Masked
Autodesk Interactive Transparent

If your code uses the Shader.Find() method to search for the shaders, remove spaces from the shader names, for example, Shader.Find("AutodeskInteractive).

Upgrading from URP 7.2.x and later releases

URP 12.x.x does not support the package Post-Processing Stack v2. If your Project uses the package Post-Processing Stack v2, migrate the effects that use that package first.

DepthNormals Pass

Starting from version 10.0.x, URP can generate a normal texture called _CameraNormalsTexture. To render to this texture in your custom shader, add a Pass with the name DepthNormals. For an example, check the implementation in Lit.shader.

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)

URP 10.0.x implements the Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) effect.

If you intend to use the SSAO effect with your custom shaders, consider the following entities related to SSAO:

The _SCREEN_SPACE_OCCLUSION keyword.
Input.hlsl contains the new declaration float2 normalizedScreenSpaceUV in the InputData struct.
Lighting.hlsl contains the AmbientOcclusionFactor struct with the variables for calculating indirect and direct occlusion:
```
struct AmbientOcclusionFactor
{
    half indirectAmbientOcclusion;
    half directAmbientOcclusion;
};
```
Lighting.hlsl contains the following function for sampling the SSAO texture:
```
half SampleAmbientOcclusion(float2 normalizedScreenSpaceUV)
```

Lighting.hlsl contains the following function:

AmbientOcclusionFactor GetScreenSpaceAmbientOcclusion(float2
normalizedScreenSpaceUV)

To support SSAO in custom shader, add the DepthNormals Pass and the _SCREEN_SPACE_OCCLUSION keyword the the shader. For an example, check Lit.shader.

If your custom shader implements custom lighting functions, use the function GetScreenSpaceAmbientOcclusion(float2 normalizedScreenSpaceUV) to get the AmbientOcclusionFactor value for your lighting calculations.

Shadow Normal Bias

In 11.0.x the formula used to apply Shadow Normal Bias has been slightly fix in order to work better with punctual lights. As a result, to match exactly shadow outlines from earlier revisions, the parameter might to be adjusted in some scenes. Typically, using 1.4 instead of 1.0 for a Directional light is usually enough.

Intermediate Texture

In previous URP versions, URP performed the rendering via an intermediate Renderer if the Renderer had any active Renderer Features. On some platforms, this had significant performance implications. In this release, URP mitigates the issue in the following way: URP expects Renderer Features to declare their inputs using the ScriptableRenderPass.ConfigureInput method. The method provides the information that URP uses to determine automatically whether rendering via an intermediate texture is necessary.

For compatibility purpose, there is a new property Intermediate Texture in the Universal Renderer. If you select Always in the property, URP uses an intermediate texture. Selecting Auto enables the new behavior. Use the Always option only if a Renderer Feature does not declare its inputs using the ScriptableRenderPass.ConfigureInput method.

To ensure that existing projects work correctly, all existing Universal Renderer assets that were using any Renderer Features (excluding those included with URP) have the option Always selected in the Intermediate Texture property. Any newly created Universal Renderer assets have the option Auto selected.

Upgrading from URP 7.0.x-7.1.x

Upgrade to URP 7.2.0 first. Refer to Upgrading to version 7.2.0 of the Universal Render Pipeline.
URP 8.x.x does not support the package Post-Processing Stack v2. If your Project uses the package Post-Processing Stack v2, migrate the effects that use that package first.

Upgrading from LWRP to 12.x.x

There is no direct upgrade path from LWRP to URP 12.x.x. Follow the steps to upgrade LWRP to URP 11.x.x first, and then upgrade from URP 11.x.x to URP 12.x.x.