Recently, I wrote an article about using Character Creator 3 characters in Unity HDRP. This time, we are going to take a look at how to use characters using the Universal Render Pipeline. Of course, since this is Unity’s lowest end renderer (not taking into account the legacy renderers), the results are going to be way less impressive than the HDRP or even the standard renderer.
As you can guess, importing a character into Unity URP is pretty much the same as importing it into the other rendering engines. As you know, I don’t use the Unity auto-setup so I set things up manually. Also, just like with HDRP, I use the “Extract Materials” button to create the materials in Unity, so I can modify them manually.
The default look of the character is what you see in the image below. Keep in mind the default material is the “standard” material, which obviously will make the character look like plastic. Also, I am not really a fan of the hair look, because it’s using the standard transparency and the result is somewhat “see-through.”
The first thing I did was change the hair material. I switched the transparency mode to “opaque” and then I activated alpha clipping to generate the transparency. Although the transparency along the edge of the hair strands is harsher, I got rid of the “see-through” effect. Of course, this is completely optional if you don’t mind the “see-through” effect. I think this is something you have to test for your project.
The URP includes a “complex lit” material, but there isn’t really any significant change that will make your skin look better. All you can do in this case is tweak the material to make it look the best you can. One thing you can do is use CC3’s detail normal, which is imported into Unity along with the character. This is the same detail normal used in CC3’s and iClone’s renderer.
If you apply that as a “detail normal map,” increase its tiling and decrease the amount, you will have a very nice subtle effect.
However, personally I “cheat” to make my characters look better. I actually created a skin material (it’s actually in the Unity Asset Store as “Versatile Skin Shader”) that works in URP. While it’s not a true SSS material, it does a pretty good job at simulating skin.
And this is it. I hope you find this useful.
