Huge black bar in the middle of the screen when using Deferred Rendering (BiRP)

[valentin56610]

Describe the bug Visual black bar in the middle of the screen.

Video of the bug happening: https://streamable.com/0pbwk8

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior: Basically have your terrain/scene setup, just switch rendering to Deferred, enjoy the black bars.

Expected behavior No black bar in the middle of the screen.

Screenshots Render ON:

Render OFF:

Project(please complete the following information):

• Unity version: 2022.3.24ff
• Render Pipeline: Built-in Render Pipeline
• Render Pipeline Version: ?
• Nature Renderer Version: 2022.0.3

System (please complete the following information):

• Platform: MacOS
• Platform OS: MacOS Sonoma
• Graphics API and Version: Metal

Additional context Does not happen if render mode on Camera is set to Forward.

[maxplooi]

It looks like some of the detail objects/trees do not fully support Nature Renderer in the shaders. Most likely, the deferred shader pass is not patched correctly. Can you give it a try with different shaders on your prefabs to see if that fixes the issue? (The included Nature Shaders are always good to test with)

Another possible cause is that a script in the scene is rendering the camera with a replacement shader, which does not support Nature Renderer. Do you have any image effects or other special effects that use a custom camera in the scene? You can try disabling those to check if the issue goes away.

[valentin56610]

It looks like some of the detail objects/trees do not fully support Nature Renderer in the shaders. Most likely, the deferred shader pass is not patched correctly. Can you give it a try with different shaders on your prefabs to see if that fixes the issue? (The included Nature Shaders are always good to test with)

Another possible cause is that a script in the scene is rendering the camera with a replacement shader, which does not support Nature Renderer. Do you have any image effects or other special effects that use a custom camera in the scene? You can try disabling those to check if the issue goes away.

I am using The Vegetation Engine for all shaders for all vegetation items in the game.

As for post processing, I have tried disabling it and the black bar is still there, so it's not coming from there!

[valentin56610]

UPDATE: It seems to be linked to the Ambient Occlusion from the Post Process unity package.

When I play without Ambient Occlusion, then all is fine, no black bar. As soon as I turn ON Ambient Occlusion, the bar appear.

Fun fact: Turning it back OFF doesn't make them go away, they will stay until scene is reloaded WITHOUT ambient occlusion

Well and obviously this is still linked to the Deferred rendering mode. So it is AO + deferred that creates these black bars.

[valentin56610]

One more update: Changing the camera's clipping planes can make the black bar disappear Changing either the far clipping plane to 100 (from 10,000) or the near clipping plane to 1 (from 0.01) will remove the black bar

This is obviously not a solution, as I cannot use those clipping planes, but this make it go away. Maybe something worth checking.

Regular camera clipping planes (black bar present):

Clipping planes close set to 1 (no black bar):

Clipping plane far set to 100 (no black bar):

Also, changing the camera's clear flags from Skybox to anything else do also make the black bar go away:

[valentin56610]

Ok so I think I have found the culprit.

I am using Amplify Impostors (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/amplify-impostors-119877) And so when a vegetation impostor is being rendered, the black bar appears

As soon as I remove/delete the impostor(s), the black bar is gone

[valentin56610]

Final update and will be waiting for a fix: Rendering the impostors using Nature Renderer in Deferred mode + having Ambient Occlusion creates huge black bars on both end of the world.

Having no impostors OR no ambient occlusion OR not rendering using nature renderer removes the black bars.

I have tried placing the prefab and moving it around, no black bars. But if Nature Renderer is spawning/rendering it, then they appear

[stonstad]

Hi Valentin. Thank you for sharing your troubleshooting steps. I'm seeing similar behavior. I can confirm it is happening with NR 2022 + BiRP + Deferred. Changing the near clipping plane from 0.3 to 0.6 mitigates the behavior.

@maxplooi Any updates regarding this behavior?