Volumetrics & fog
Fog, light shafts, clouds and atmospheric scattering add depth that flat lighting cannot. This section covers raymarched volumes, height fog, god rays and volumetric lighting in Unity. These effects are costly, so many guides also show how to fake them cheaply. 40 hand-picked Unity guides, tutorials, videos and repos, kept current.
- @minionsart.bsky.social: low rolling volume clouds, kept simple to follow
Cloud effect built on a local volume fog cube post, explained in an easy tutorial.
bsky.app · Aug 2026 - Low Rolling Clouds Volume
Patreon post on a localized volume of low rolling clouds.
patreon.com · Aug 2026 - Volumetric Box/Fog Volume
Patreon post on making a box-shaped volumetric fog volume.
patreon.com · Jul 2026 - How we use visual effects to build atmosphere in our cRPG, Glasshouse
Using HDRP and visual effects to build the moody feudalpunk atmosphere of a CRPG.
unity.com · Sep 2025 - How to create atmospheric environments on a budget
Building cinematic atmospheric environments with HDRP and volumetric lighting while keeping performance budget low.
unity.com · Aug 2025 - High-End Lighting & Environments with HDRP in Unity 6
HDRP in Unity 6: physically accurate lighting, environments and effects, with performance guidance.
unity.com · Aug 2025 - Tricubic sampling gist for smoother low-res volumetric light shafts
Felix Westin's tricubic texture sampling snippet, used to reduce low-resolution artifacts in intense light shafts.
gist.github.com · Jun 2025 - @halisavakis.com: fake multiple scattering by compositing bloom with fog
Proof of concept blurring high-frequency fog detail via a bloom composited with the fog, plus its limitations.
bsky.app · Jun 2025 - @halisavakis.com: TotK-style fluid trails on volumetric height fog
Renders a sphere top-down into a buffer, then displaces and blends a custom render texture to leave distorted fog trails.
bsky.app · Nov 2024 - @halisavakis.com: noisy raymarched volumetric fog in about 70 lines
Minimal Unity raymarched fog shader with noise, boilerplate included, in roughly seventy lines.
bsky.app · Oct 2024 - @halisavakis.com: sampling Adaptive Probe Volumes inside volumetric fog
URP fog sampling baked APV data, so emissive objects baked into probes light the fog.
bsky.app · Oct 2024 - Worldspace Ground Fog Effect
Patreon post on a world-space ground fog effect.
patreon.com · Jun 2024 - Sun Beams / God Rays Shader Breakdown
Breaks down a god rays shader using billboarded quads or particles for light shafts.
cyanilux.com · May 2024 - Light rays: stretched billboard quads with masking (shadow, cookie, depth fade)
Post showing light rays made from stretched billboard quads masked by shadow, cookie and depth fade.
mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 2024 - GitHub - GarrettGunnell/Shell-Texturing: Volumetric rendering of fur
Repo: volumetric fur rendering using shell texturing.
github.com · Oct 2023 - Volumetrics: Introduction to ray marching | Tutorial
Introduces volumetric ray marching in Unity.
youtube.com · ~Sep 2023 - The Four Vertex Volume
Explains a four-vertex volume rendering trick.
simonschreibt.de · Apr 2023 - Interactive Volumetric Fog with Fluid Dynamics
Breaks down real-time interactive volumetric fog using fluid simulation and compute shaders in Unity.
shahriyarshahrabi.medium.com · ~Oct 2021 - Coloring Raymarched Volumetric Light Through Stained Glass
Colors raymarched volumetric light as it passes through stained glass, continuing a previous tutorial.
valeriomarty.medium.com · ~Aug 2021 - Unity Fake Volumetric Light
Forum post on a fake volumetric light shader that fades vertex color by view normal.
realtimevfx.com · ~May 2021 - Rendering volumetric clouds using signed distance fields – UHawk VR Development Blog
Renders volumetric clouds in Unity using signed distance fields.
blog.uhawkvr.com · May 2020 - Looking Through Water
Catlike Coding tutorial on underwater fog and fake refraction.
catlikecoding.com · Aug 2018 - My take on shaders: Vertical fog – Harry Alisavakis
Tutorial on building a vertical fog shader.
halisavakis.com · ~Jul 2018 - My take on shaders: Firewatch multi-colored fog – Harry Alisavakis
Recreates Firewatch-style multi-colored fog.
halisavakis.com · ~Nov 2017 - Atmospheric Scattering Shader
Final shader step of a series simulating Rayleigh scattering for a planet's atmosphere.
alanzucconi.com · Oct 2017 - A Shader for the Atmospheric Sphere
Writes the shader for the atmospheric sphere in a scattering series.
alanzucconi.com · Oct 2017 - A Journey Through the Atmosphere
Models how atmospheric density changes with altitude for scattering.
alanzucconi.com · Oct 2017 - Volumetric Atmospheric Scattering
Intro to volumetric atmospheric scattering, explaining why the sky is blue and sunsets are red.
alanzucconi.com · Oct 2017 - Creating a Volumetric Ray Marcher
Tutorial on creating a volumetric ray marcher.
shaderbits.com · ~Nov 2016 - Volumetric Rendering: Signed Distance Functions - Alan Zucconi
Explains using signed distance functions to build complex 3D shapes in a volumetric shader.
alanzucconi.com · Jul 2016 - Volumetric Rendering: Raymarching - Alan Zucconi
Explains the raymarching technique for volumetric rendering with clear shader code.
alanzucconi.com · Jul 2016 - Volumetric Rendering: Ambient Occlusion - Alan Zucconi
Adds ambient occlusion to a raymarched volumetric shader.
alanzucconi.com · Jul 2016 - Volumetric Rendering - Alan Zucconi
Introduces volumetric rendering shaders and how they can improve Unity games.
alanzucconi.com · Jul 2016 - Volumetric Rendering: Surface Shading
Adds realistic surface shading and lighting to raymarched volumetric rendering.
alanzucconi.com · Jul 2016 - Volumetric Rendering: Volume Raycasting
Volume raycasting for volumetric rendering (members-only post).
alanzucconi.com · Jul 2016 - Volumetric Rendering: Hard & Soft Shadows
Hard and soft shadows for volumetric rendering (members-only post).
alanzucconi.com · Jul 2016 - Doom 3 – Volumetric Glow
Explains the volumetric glow effect in Doom 3 and how it is faked with simple geometry.
simonschreibt.de · May 2013 - Volume ray casting - Wikipedia
Wikipedia overview of volume ray casting and how it derives from the rendering equation.
en.wikipedia.org · Jan 2006 - Gradient Fog For Unity by Hyphinett
Itch.io asset: custom gradient fog effect for Unity.
boaheck.itch.io - Coding Adventure: Clouds
Video experimenting with rendering volumetric clouds.
youtube.com