Adding a custom SurfaceData property / gbuffer to a URP project

[solar trench]

I recently tried adding a custom SurfaceData property / gbuffer to URP and it was a lot of work. I suspect it wasn't on the Unity team's radar as something users are likely to want to do, which is understandable because I think it's an advanced topic that most projects won't need.

However, I've found that the workflow of adding a SurfaceData property / gbuffer is more cumbersome than it needs to be right now, and it's possible to improve this a lot with a few small changes. (Detailed information is in the linked repository)

My question is two-tiered:

• Is there anything in the works to make it easier to expand SurfaceData / add a gbuffer? It would be amazing to be able to do this without having to modify the URP package.
• Having recently looked into the matter, I can suggest a few specific low-impact changes that would go a long way in improving this workflow. Is there any way I can contribute this? I'd be more than happy to sign an NDA and submit a pull request, for example.

[autumn crypt]

Hey Roy, I noticed your forum post, thanks for sharing!

We don't have this in the works currently, although we have some ideas to support different gbuffer layouts which will help to unify the pipelines.

Feel free to create a PR with the (minimal) changes you would need to improve this workflow. The less change the better, can't be a breaking change. I can take a look then but I can't promise anything.

[solar trench]

Oh, sweet! There's a public repository I can contribute to? I went looking for one yesterday and didn't find it

I just found this though:

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/Graphics

Is that the right place to do it? It has a com.unity.render-pipelines.universal folder 👀

[autumn crypt]

you can create a PR there if I'm not mistaken. We won't land that directly though.