
The big issue for me, though, is that there is a very high performance cost to this render technique with multiple blurred panels or a very large panel. For world space UI, this technique isn’t required (and I couldn’t get it to work with limited attempts), as we can use one of the other methods described later. Of the three methods I’ve found, this is the only one that works in “Screen Space - Overlay” currently. This asset works in both Screen Space - Camera and Screen Space - Overlay rendering modes. It works by using another camera to render a texture, and then using that texture in a custom blur shader on a UI component. I purchased that also, and found that it does what it says. When converting my project to use HDRP, I saw that the same developer created a GaussianBlur_HDRP asset. In the new Scriptable Rendering Pipelines (SRP) in Unity, GrabPass is no longer possible, presumably because there is a high performance cost to it. When I was using the soon-to-be legacy built-in pipeline, I purchased this asset which allowed me to have UI panel blur (which also blurred other panels behind it) using GrabPass functionality. Perhaps it could be used in combination with one of the above methods for UI blur, but I haven’t tried it out yet. New! Unity HDRP devs have linked to the following GitHub repository for an example of HDRP UI Camera Stacking: This method works in Screen Space - Camera mode, can potentially have much better performance than method 4 (depending on settings), but has some issues when resizing the screen that I’m not able to resolve. Use a Custom Pass Gaussian Blur which is output to a render texture, and use the render texture on an Unlit Shader Graph material. This one works in Screen Space - Camera mode, solves the problems with method #3, but has a high performance cost. Use Method 3 but with the Graphics Compositor instead of Custom Passes. This one does not work in Screen Space - Overlay, and leads to the before-post-processed scene color being blurred in order to prevent the UI being affected by post-processing. Use Shader Graph to create an HDRP Unlit shader that uses the LOD property on the HD Scene Color node for blur, in combination with one or more Custom Passes. This one does not work in Screen Space - Overlay, won’t work in a Custom Pass, will work in the Graphics Compositor, but currently renders UI elements behind the blur. Use HDRP’s included Unlit shader with distortion enabled, on an Image component. This one works in both screen space modes, but can have a huge performance cost.

Use another camera to output to a render texture, and use that render texture in a custom blur shader attached to an Image component. I’m listing it just to make others aware of it. Since I haven’t tested it out, there is no dedicated instructions for it here. Update: I added a 6th method below as I just found out about it. I’ll describe them briefly here, then dedicate entire sections with instructions for each.
Compositor toolkit how to#
There are 5 methods I’ve found (so far) on how to do a Unity UI panel blur in HDRP.
