FAQ

Highlight Plus supports the Built-in Render Pipeline and the Universal Render Pipeline (URP). HDRP is not supported. See URP Setup for pipeline-specific configuration.

No. Highlight Plus works with 3D objects (MeshRenderer, SkinnedMeshRenderer). For UI highlighting, consider using Unity’s built-in UI effects or a dedicated UI outline shader.

Set the static flag at startup:

HighlightEffect.useUnscaledTime = true;

Ensure the ground mesh has a Collider, Depth Texture is enabled in the URP Asset, and the Ground Layer Mask does not include the highlighted object’s own layer. Increase the Offset Y value if the raycast origin is below the surface.

SMAA can conflict with Highlight Plus rendering. Switch to FXAA or TAA, or adjust the render queue in the Highlight Plus Render Feature.

Enable Update When Offscreen on the character’s SkinnedMeshRenderer. This ensures renderer.bounds stays up to date during animations.

The Highlight Plus Render Feature must be added to every URP Renderer Asset referenced by Project Settings → Quality. Different quality levels can reference different URP Assets.

Super-sampling renders to an off-screen target. Create a child camera with Clear Flags set to Depth Only, restrict Highlight Plus Cameras Layer Mask to that camera, and enable Ignore Object Visibility.

Yes. Enable Ignore Object Visibility on the HighlightEffect component.

Yes. All Kronnect assets are fully compatible with Unity 6. The minimum supported version is Unity 2022.3 LTS, and this includes Unity 6 and any newer releases.

Add the HighlightEffect component to the child object you want to exclude and enable the 'Ignore' checkbox on that component.

Custom ShaderGraph materials can interfere with highlight rendering. Replace the custom material with a standard URP material to resolve the issue.

Use the camera layer mask option in Highlight Plus (available in URP). This setting allows you to specify which cameras can render the effect, so you can exclude specific cameras like your RenderTexture camera from displaying the highlight effect.

There are two approaches: (1) Disable the Highlight Plus Render Feature at runtime using the method described in the Unity forum thread about enabling/disabling render features, or (2) Iterate through the HighlightEffect.effects static list which contains all instances and disable the components or set their camera layer mask to nothing. A global toggle feature is planned for a future update.

The Cameras Layer Mask specifies which camera gameobject layers can render the effect. It is not related to the camera's culling mask. It refers to the layer assigned to the camera gameobject itself and is useful for controlling which cameras render the effect in multi-camera setups.

Assign your main camera gameobject to a specific layer, then exclude that layer from the Highlight Plus Cameras Layer Mask setting. This will prevent that camera from rendering the outline effect, effectively acting as a global outline toggle.

Highlight Plus uses two passes: a mask pass (which ensures the outline is drawn around the object rather than inside it) and the outline itself pass. This is the expected behavior. To optimize performance when applying outlines to many objects, use the 'Include' option with the 'Combine Meshes' checkbox enabled, and place a single Highlight Plus component on an empty GameObject in the scene.

Call the Refresh() method on the HighlightEffect component after unhiding/reactivating the GameObjects. This refreshes the highlight state and ensures it displays correctly.

Delay the destruction of the original object by one frame after instantiating the copy. Destroying the original object in the same frame as instantiation can interfere with highlight initialization. Call Refresh() on the highlighted objects after the original is destroyed to restore highlights if needed.

Delay destroy calls to LateUpdate rather than calling them in the same frame or Update where Refresh() was called. The Refresh() call registers objects with the render pipeline, and destroying them too soon causes the pipeline to try accessing destroyed objects. Moving destroy operations to LateUpdate or delaying them by at least one frame after Refresh() prevents these errors.

Use the Masking UI section in Highlight Plus. Refer to the advanced topics guide at https://kronnect.com/guides/highlight-plus-advanced-topics-and-notes/ for detailed instructions on masking UI elements to occlude outlines.

Check that the Camera's Layer Mask is correctly configured to include the layers used by the highlight effect. An incorrectly set Layer Mask on the camera will prevent the effect from rendering.

If using URP, ensure the Highlight Plus Render Feature is added to all URP assets in Project Settings > Quality (there can be multiple URP assets per quality level). Enable Depth Texture in the URP asset settings. You can also try different outline quality levels (fastest to highest) and experiment with multi-pass vs multi-view/single pass rendering modes.

Reduce the 'Check interval' setting from its default value of 1 second to a lower value like 0.2 seconds. This increases the responsiveness of the see-through highlight detection.

For highlighting many objects, use Beautify's screen space outline feature instead of Highlight Plus, as Highlight Plus is designed for selective highlighting/selection rather than scene-wide highlighting. Beautify's Per Object Id technique works well for this use case.

Select the URP asset, double-click on the renderer, and add both the Beautify and Highlight Plus render features to the list of renderer features. A single renderer asset can use multiple render features simultaneously.

This issue occurs when old Highlight Plus components from the previous version are still present in the scene. Remove all old highlight components and add them again fresh to resolve the problem.

Access the global static list HighlightEffect.effects to iterate through all active highlight effects, then update the Quality setting on each effect when the quality level changes.

Use the SetHighlighted(true/false) method to trigger fade in/out effects. This will activate the fade animations if they are configured in the inspector.

The Alignment option displays the label on the left or right side of the target based on screen position. The Relative Alignment option considers left or right according to the target's look direction (so 'right' means the target's right, not the right side of the screen).

You can child an empty gameobject to the target, move it to the desired position, and assign this empty gameobject as the target for the label. Alternatively, you can use the existing Vertical Offset option for absolute viewport adjustments.

The object material can clip or not independently. Enabling clipping in Highlight Plus will apply clipping to the effects of Highlight Plus. You can use Alpha Cut Off in Highlight Plus even if the material has alpha clipping disabled.

Using render scale below 1.0 with STP (Standard Template Pipeline) enabled can cause a surface mismatch error where color and depth surface dimensions don't match, breaking highlights. Switching to FSR1 resolves this issue. A fix has been provided by the developer.

Memory spikes are often caused by setting the normal option to something other than 'Preserve Original', which creates a cached copy of the mesh. This is the most expensive operation. Otherwise, memory usage is negligible. Also, changing the target setting from the default 'Children' to 'Only This Object' can significantly reduce GC allocations. Always measure performance in a build rather than the editor, as the editor triggers extra allocations even from basic APIs like GetComponent().

In a stress test within Unity Editor, instancing 100 copies of a cube with outline takes approximately 22 KB per instance. However, editor measurements include extra allocations from Unity itself, so build performance will be better.

Labels are only visible in Game View. The 'Always Show In Editor Mode' checkbox makes labels appear when not in playmode, but they will not show in Scene View - only in Game View.

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