Among the most frequent questions Unity engineers get from creators are “What is HDRP?” and “How can I use it in my project?” So we put together this list of considerations to help you understand how you can use the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) in your projects to get the most out of it.

Let’s start by answering a few questions to assess if your project is ready for HDRP:

Are you on the right target platform?

The first question you need to ask yourself is if you are shipping on a supported platform. If you’re planning to ship on consoles such as Xbox One and PlayStation 4, Windows (DirectX 11, DirectX 12 and Vulkan), Mac (Metal), and VR headsets (PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, OpenVR, Windows Mixed Reality), then we’ve got you covered. There’s currently very little support for Linux, and no support for Nintendo Switch, OpenGL, and mobile platforms.

Are you in the right production cycle?

HDRP will be out of preview with the Unity 2019.3 release. We strongly recommend you use HDRP with that version onwards; with Unity 2019.3 Long-Term Support (LTS) and above, you will have full support. If you use HDRP with any previous Unity versions, you’ll have to do all of the maintenance yourself.

Do you have technical pillars that are compatible with HDRP and production skill sets?

Working with HDRP requires a lot of upgrade and maintenance. To move from the Built-in rendering pipeline or the Universal Render Pipeline, you’ll also have to ramp up on technical knowledge for HDRP. Make sure that you and your team allocate some time to learn this tech.

Is it the right tech for your artistic vision?

HDRP is grounded in physically based rendering and offers a unified lighting pipeline. Also, it comes with several tools for your artistic needs: Visual Effect Graph, Look Dev, and post-processes. For characters and environment, HDRP offers skin, hair, and eye shaders, as well as subsurface scattering and some support for terrain.

If you’re still deciding what render pipeline to use, here are a few things to consider. HDRP is supported with Unity 2019 LTS and above, and it comes with its own high-definition post-processing stack. It also comes with ray tracing support, VFX Graph support, Shader Graph support, and state-of-the-art graphics features.

If your project contains complex scenes, HDRP will scale better than with the built-in rendering pipeline. However, if you're planning to ship on both mobile and consoles, HDRP might not be the right tech for you.