Introduction

What is Global Snow (URP)?

Global Snow is a drag-and-drop snow solution for Unity's Universal Render Pipeline. Add a single component to any GameObject, enable the Render Feature on your URP Renderer, and the entire scene is covered in realistic snow with automatic occlusion, relief shading, glitter, footprints, and terrain marks.

The URP version operates exclusively in deferred rendering, modifying the GBuffers directly for maximum performance and visual quality. It ships as a separate package inside the same Asset Store purchase alongside the Built-in RP version.

Key Features

Snow Rendering

• Realistic relief shading - raymarched 3D waves over the snow surface with occlusion shadows and glitter.
• Automatic coverage - a zenithal (top-down) depth pass detects which surfaces are exposed to snowfall.
• Subsurface scattering - light bleeds through the snow layer with configurable color and intensity.
• GI preservation - optionally retains global illumination contribution on snow-covered surfaces.

Snow Interactions

• Footprints - human-shaped footprint decals with fade-out duration.
• Terrain marks - collision-driven deformable trails from characters, vehicles, or projectiles.
• Snowfall - built-in particle system with configurable intensity, speed, and wind.
• Snow dust - wind-driven dust particles near ground level.
• Camera frost - screen-space frost overlay for immersive cold environments.

URP-Exclusive Features

• Snow Surface - deformable mesh component that generates a physical snow layer on terrain or custom geometry, with pressure sinking, overflow, and simplification.
• Render Graph support - fully compatible with Unity 6+ Render Graph pipeline.
• Render Feature integration - clean integration via URP Renderer Feature, no camera scripts required.

Coverage Control

• Layer mask - controls which objects can receive snow based on their layer.
• Per-object exclusion - attach GlobalSnowIgnoreCoverage to any GameObject.
• Coverage mask - paint snow on/off using an alpha mask texture with a built-in Scene View editor.
• Altitude control - minimum altitude, scatter, and blending for natural snow lines.

Requirements

Next Steps

1. Quick Start - get snow running in 5 minutes.
2. Setup Guide - detailed Render Feature and deferred configuration.
3. Parameters Reference - full list of every setting.
4. Snow Surface - URP-exclusive deformable snow mesh.
5. FAQ - common questions answered.