Introduction to URP for advanced creators (Unity 6 edition)

This guide can help experienced Unity developers and technical artists develop as efficiently as possible with the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) in Unity 6.

URP is Unity’s default renderer for 2D and 3D games for mobile, XR, and untethered hardware. It’s the successor to our Built-In Render Pipeline, designed to be efficient for you to learn, customize, and scale to all Unity-supported platforms.

In Unity 6 it offers the same functionality as the Built-In Render Pipeline, and in a number of areas, exceeds its quality levels and performance.

Some of the areas this guide provides expert guidance and best practices for include how to:

• Set up URP for a new project, or convert an existing Built-In Render Pipeline-based project to URP.
• Work with URP Quality settings.
• Use all lighting tools available in URP, including new features like Adaptive Probe Volumes (APVs) for real-time global illumination and lighting scenarios that blend between day and night lighting.
• Use URP shaders for lit scenes and understand the differences between URP and Built-In Render Pipeline shaders.
• Use custom shaders, includes and HLSL includes.
• Use the URP post-processing framework, including adding a Local Volume and controlling post-processing with code.
• Use Rendering layers.
• Apply many kinds of performance optimizations with tools in URP, including the newly-released GPU Resident Drawer, GPU occlusion culling, and more.
• Customize the render pipeline using Renderer Features and the render graph system.

With scalability, customizability, and a rich feature set, URP offers you creative freedom in any type of project, from stylized visuals to physically based rendering.