Upgrading A Unity Project To The Universal Render Pipeline (URP)

Today I’ll show you how to convert your default Unity project into a URP project (using Unity 2020.3.17f1).

Today’s Objective: Show you how to upgrade your existing Unity project to use the Universal Render Pipeline (URP). This allows for much better support and optimization for building projects to a large range of platforms, including mobiles, PCs, and consoles.

Note: I am using Unity version 2020.3.17f1. Your Unity version may look different.

Installing the URP package:

With your existing project open, open the Package Manager:

Universal RP will not be selected by default, so make sure you are on the “Unity Registry” list, then search for “Univ…” and the “Universal RP” package should appear as the only result. Click it, then click “Install”.

Once installed, you can close the Package Manager.

Converting the project to URP:

Create a new “Render Settings” folder in your project files, then create a new URP Pipeline Asset (Forward Renderer). You can call it whatever you want.

The asset and a Renderer will both be created.

Go to “Edit/Project Settings/Graphics”. The option called “Scriptable Render Pipeline Settings” at the top will be empty. Change it to be the newly created pipeline asset (which should be the only one available, unless you are not upgrading an existing project).

Upgrading materials to URP:

If any of your materials are now showing only a bright pink color, don’t worry. It just means that you need to upgrade the materials to be URP compatible, which is really easy.

Go to “Edit/Render Pipeline/Universal Render Pipeline” and click “Upgrade project materials to UniversalRP materials”. This will convert all the materials in your project to URP materials, which should fix all the pink problems.