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Performance Tips

intermediate performance

Global Snow & Rain 3 · Troubleshooting & FAQ

Overview

Global Snow adds the snow to the G-buffer during the deferred pass, so the base cost does not depend on how many materials the scene has. The cost grows with the features you turn on. These tips help you keep the frame rate up on lower end hardware or in large scenes.

Start With a Preset

The Presets in the Weather block set the main quality options in one click:

Preset	What it sets
Best	Relief Mapping, Coverage Quality 3, Running Drops at full resolution, Deep Marks on.
Medium	Normal Mapping, Coverage Quality 2, Running Drops at half resolution, Deep Marks on.
Fastest	Flat Shading, the lowest Coverage Quality the Coverage Extension allows, Running Drops and Deep Marks off.

Optimization Checklist

Optimization	Impact	Details
Set unused Weather sliders to 0	High	A slider at 0 turns that effect off. Rain and Puddles start at 0: leave them there if your scene needs no water, so the water work is skipped.
Running Drops at Half Resolution, or off	High	Running drops are the heaviest part of the rain. Half Resolution roughly halves their cost. Turn them off if you do not need them.
Use a lower Complexity	High	Flat Shading is the fastest, without normal detail or relief. Normal Mapping sits in the middle.
Lower the Coverage Quality	Medium	A smaller coverage texture is cheaper to capture and to read. With a Coverage Extension above 1, the quality is at least 2.
Keep Coverage Update on Discrete	Medium	Discrete captures the coverage again only after the camera moves 50 meters. Use Manual for static scenes and call `UpdateSnowCoverage()` when needed. Avoid Every Frame unless large moving objects must block snow in real time.
Turn off Deep Marks if you do not need them	Medium	Deep Marks keep extra work running in Play mode for the snow layer around the camera.
Lower Snowfall and Snow Dust	Medium	The Snowfall slider sets how many flakes are drawn, and Snow Dust sets how many puffs are drawn. Reduce Emission Distance to keep the flakes closer to the camera.
Disable unused features	Medium	Turn off Footprints, Collision Marks, Impact FX, Frost and Camera Frost if your scene does not need them. Keep Wall Wetness at 0 unless walls must look damp without rain, and set the Deep Marks Shadow to 0 to skip it (the Fastest preset does).
Turn off Compare when you are done	Medium	Compare with Same Side renders the scene a second time with a copy of the game camera.
Leave particles and small moving objects out of the Zenithal Mask	Low	They do not need to block snow, and the top-down capture has less to draw.
Limit the cameras	Low	Use Cameras Layer Mask in the Global Snow Render Feature to skip cameras that do not need snow.

Exclusion Optimization

Excluding objects with Global Snow Ignore Coverage renders them into a mask. To keep this cheap:

Keep Use Fast Mask Shader enabled (default) unless the excluded object uses vertex animation.
Prefer the Layer Mask when you exclude many objects that share a layer.
Change Exclusion Depth Bias to fix border artifacts before you turn on Exclusion Double Sided.

Rain Performance

Running drops are drawn only on the Game and Scene View cameras, and only near the camera.
With Rain Ripples above 0 and some puddles, the rain also draws its impacts on the water. If your scene shows no puddles while it rains, set Puddles or Rain Ripples to 0.
Contact Ripples work only in Play mode and only on puddles.

Profiling

Use the Frame Debugger (Window > Analysis > Frame Debugger) to see the Global Snow passes and their order. Look for the snow pass after the G-buffer, the running drops before the transparent objects, and the top-down coverage capture.

Turn on Show Coverage Depth in the Tools & Debug foldout to see the top-down depth texture and check what takes part in the capture.

Next Steps

Troubleshooting - solutions to common rendering issues.
Parameters - adjust quality and coverage settings.

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