Render Pipeline

A render pipeline performs a series of operations that take the contents of a Scene, and displays them on a screen.

At a high level, these operations are:

• Culling; it lists the objects that need to be rendered, preferably the ones visible to the camera (frustum culling) and unoccluded by other objects (occlusion culling).

• Rendering, is the drawing of these objects, with the correct lighting and some of their properties, into pixel-based buffers.

• Post-processing operations can be carried out on these buffers, for instance applying color grading, bloom and depth of field, to generate the final output frame that is sent to a display device.

Different render pipelines have different capabilities and performance characteristics, and are suitable for different games, applications, and platforms.It can be difficult to switch a Project from one render pipeline to another, because different render pipelines use different shader outputs, and might not have the same features. It is therefore important to understand the different render pipelines that Unity provides, so that you can make the right decision for your project early in development.Unity offers the following render pipelines:

• The Built-in Render Pipeline is Unity’s default render pipeline. It is a general-purpose render pipeline that has limited options for customization.

• The Universal Render Pipeline (URP) is a Scriptable Render Pipeline that is quick and easy to customize, and lets you create optimized graphics across a wide range of platforms.

• The High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) is a Scriptable Render Pipeline that lets you create cutting-edge, high-fidelity graphics on high-end platforms

Unity - Manual: Render pipeline feature comparisondocs.unity3d.com

• You can create your own custom render pipeline using Unity’s Scriptable Render Pipeline API.

Unity’s Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) is a feature that allows you to control rendering via C# scripts.

Until early 2018, only one render pipeline was available in Unity; the Built-In Render Pipeline.

URP vs. HDRP: What to Choose?Medium

Unity shader URP vs HDRP - A23DA23Dco