HAZE - Volumetric Fog & Lighting for URP

HAZE was born from my own need for a volumetric fog and lighting pipeline that's easy to use and to art-direct. Now I'm bringing this tool for all of you to use and make beautiful atmospheric scenes.

Links

Documentation | Bluesky | Discord

About

HAZE is a froxel-based volumetric fog and lighting solution for URP, made using Unity's RenderGraph API. Its main purpose is to enhance the visuals of your scenes by providing subtle volumetric effects that are easy to control and art-direct.

Features

• Lightweight froxel-based implementation
• Global fog controls
• Local fog volumes for more granular control
• Integration with Unity’s volume system for
• Global fog visuals
• Overriding renderer feature settings
• Integrated screen-space multiple scattering effect (SSMS) to blur the scene in the distance based on the density of the volumetric fog
• Support for main light shadows
• Support for secondary lights and shadows (currently only in Forward+/Deferred+ pipelines)
• Light cookie support
• Support for height-based cutoff
• Support for both perspective and orthographic camera projection
• Supports illumination contribution from adaptive probe volumes (APV)
• Supports VR (though some additional testing might be required due to lack of equipment)
• As of 1.2.2: Support for multiple cameras & support for compatibility mode

NEW Features

• Per-light contribution control using the alpha value of the secondary light's color
• Additional lights can optionally boost the fog's density, allowing for light beams without the need for extra fog
• Subtractive density mode for volumes allows to carve out fog from specific areas
• Per-volume gradient color for more artistic control over a volume's ambient color
• Exposed controls for IGN and temporal accumulation
• Per-light component to more easily control each light's contribution to the fog
• As of 1.2.6: Optional raymarched god rays pass for crisper sun rays

Project requirements

• HAZE is made for Unity 6+ versions
• HAZE is currently only supported in the Universal Render Pipeline (URP)

Known restrictions

• Because of the way secondary light data is stored by Unity, HAZE only supports punctual light contribution to the fog in the Forward+ and Deferred+ pipelines. This can be updated if there’s enough request for it, but it might come at a performance overhead.
• At this moment, all fog (global and local) share the same 3D noise texture which is assigned via HAZE’s renderer feature. Support for per-volume noise can also be added if there’s enough demand for that.

What HAZE is NOT for

While HAZE is a volumetric fog solution, the froxel-based approach doesn't allow for too much shape detail or detail frequency without a heavy performance hit. That being said, HAZE is not suitable to simulate denser effects like heavy smoke or clouds.

Active support

HAZE was made to suit my needs, but these will most likely be different than yours. I'd love to hear from you what sort of features you'd want in HAZE and find ways to support you and your project! So don't hesitate to reach out to me with any thoughts/ideas on Discord or Bluesky via the links above ✨

Scenes shown in the screenshots were made for promotional reasons and are not included in the package.