How to Upgrade a Project to URP in Unity
Explaining how to upgrade your project to the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) in Unity
Objective: Upgrade a basic 3D project to URP.
Setup
To get things set up for this tutorial, I created a simple 3D template project through the Unity Hub
When everything is loaded, you should find yourself in a similar scene as I have shown here below (I added a cube and gave it a blue material just cause).
With all this, we can now go about upgrading the project to URP.
Installing URP
If you would like to read the documentation yourself for how to install URP into your project, follow this link here. Otherwise, I will go through the steps in this section.
First, open up the package manager through the Unity Editor. When done correctly, you should get a window that looks like the following:
In the search bar near the top right of the package manager window, type in Universal RP and install this package into your project by hitting the install button at the bottom right of the package manager window.
It will likely take a few minutes for everything to install. You will know everything is installed once you no longer see a window with a loading bar, and the package manager for the Universal RP package should say “Up to date” where it previously said, “Install”.
You can also verify the package has been properly installed by checking the Packages folder in the Project window.
Great. Now we need to configure the URP to use it in our project
Configuring URP
To configure URP, the first thing we must do is create a Universal Render Pipeline Asset. This is done by right-clicking over your Project window and selecting Assets > Create > Rendering > Universal Render Pipeline > Pipeline Asset. When done correctly, you should have two new assets in your Project window.
Next, we need to add this created pipeline asset to our Graphics Settings. To do this, navigate to Edit > Project Settings… > Graphics. In the below screenshot, I already went ahead and added in the pipeline asset we created. When done correctly, your window should look like the below image.
With this all done, if you had an object in the scene with a material like I did, you may see that is now pink.
The reason this happens is that we must now upgrade our shaders as well to work with our new pipeline asset.
Upgrading our Shaders
To upgrade the shaders in our project, simply navigate to Edit > Universal Render Pipeline > Upgrade Project Materials to UniversalRP Materials. How long this operation will take depends on the number of different shaders and materials you have going in your project. When done correctly, you should see the materials on your objects working as they did before.
With that, you have now properly upgraded your project to URP.
