Upgrading an Existing Project to use HDRP - 2019.2

This tutorial has been verified using Unity 2019.4 LTS

Upgrading your existing project to use HDRP is straightforward but requires a couple of extra steps to get your lighting and Shaders converted properly. In this tutorial, we cover the precautions you will want to take with your projects and then perform the upgrade.

When you upgrade your existing project to HDRP, a few things can break that you’ll need to fix. HDRP uses a new set of Shaders and Lighting Components, both of which are incompatible with the built-in Unity rendering pipeline.

You will need to upgrade your Materials and adjust the lighting settings within your project after you add the HDRP package.

To upgrade an existing project, you must first download HDRP using Unity’s Package Manager.

1. Go to the Window drop-down and select Package Manager to open the Packages window. (Figure 01)

Figure 01: Package Manager window

2. Click Advanced and then Show Preview Packages.

3. Click on the All button on the left

4. Find “High Definition RP” in the list and select it.

5. Click Install.

1. In the Project view, right click and select Create >
Rendering > High Definition Render Pipeline Asset (Figure 02). Name it “HDRenderPipelineAsset”. The name doesn’t actually matter, but this is what we’ll call it in the next section.

Figure 02: Creating the HDRP Asset.

Now add the HDRP Asset to the Scriptable Render Pipeline Graphics settings field.

1. Go to Edit > Project Settings > Graphics.
2. In the Graphics Inspector, drag and drop the HDRenderPipelineAsset into the
   Scriptable Render Pipeline Settings field. (Figure 03)

Figure 03: Placing the HDRenderPipelineAsset into the Scriptable Render Pipeline Settings

To upgrade the Materials in your Scene to HDRP-compatible Materials:

1. Navigate to Edit > Render Pipeline.

2. Select either Upgrade Project Materials to High Definition Materials or
Upgrade Selected Materials to High Definition Materials.

This will convert all or the selected Materials in your project to the new HDRP Materials. This process will not automatically convert any custom Materials or Shaders in your project; you will have to convert them manually.

You can now use HDRP and bring high-fidelity visuals to your existing Unity projects.