Introduction

What is Volumetric Fog & Mist 2?

Volumetric Fog & Mist 2 is an advanced full-screen volumetric fog effect for Unity's Universal Render Pipeline (URP). It uses optimized ray-marching to produce realistic fog, mist, dust and cloud effects with full support for lighting, shadows and transparency.

Unlike simple image-based fog, Volumetric Fog & Mist 2 renders true 3D fog volumes that respond to scene lighting, cast and receive shadows, and interact with transparent objects using custom depth pre-pass and depth peeling techniques.

Key Features

Core Fog Rendering

• Volumetric Ray-Marching — true 3D fog volumes with customizable quality, step size and near-distance boosting.
• Fog Profiles — reusable profiles for quick switching between fog styles (shared or instanced at runtime).
• Box & Sphere Shapes — fog volumes can be shaped as boxes or spheres, with smooth border falloff.
• 3D Noise — primary and detail noise textures for organic, cloud-like fog shapes with animation/turbulence.
• Constant Density Mode — smooth, noise-free fog for simple atmospheric haze.
• Distant Fog — fast noise-free background fog that complements the volumetric effect.

Lighting & Shadows

• Native Lights — full support for spot, point and directional lights with shadows (Forward, Forward+ and Deferred).
• Fast Point Lights — optimized point-light mode (up to 16 lights) without shadows for better performance.
• Sun Light Diffusion — god-ray-style light scattering through fog from the directional light.
• Shadow Reception — fog volumes receive and display directional light shadows.
• Day/Night Cycle — automatic fog color and intensity sync with Sun and Moon lights.
• Specular Highlights — simulated light reflections on fog surfaces.

Advanced Features

• Fog of War — texture-based opacity control with runtime painting, auto-restore and an in-editor brush tool.
• Fog Voids — up to 8 spherical clear areas per volume (useful for player visibility).
• Terrain Fitting — automatic heightmap capture so fog hugs terrain surfaces.
• Sub-Volumes — overlapping zones that blend different fog properties as the player moves through them.
• Transparency Support — depth pre-pass and depth peeling for correct rendering with water, glass and other transparent objects.
• Rendering Layers — per-light control over which lights affect which fog volumes.
• Fade In/Out — automatic fog visibility based on controller proximity.

Color & Gradients

• Depth Gradient — color gradient based on distance to camera.
• Height Gradient — color gradient based on vertical position within the volume.
• Distance Near/Far Color — tint fog differently at close and far range.
• Deep Obscurance — darkens the interior of thick fog volumes for added depth.

Dynamic Fog & Mist (Bonus)

• Distance-Based Fog — lightweight fog calculated from camera distance with exponential/linear density.
• Wind Animation — animated fog noise with configurable direction, scale and turbulence.
• Vertical Gradient — horizon-to-zenith color variation for atmospheric sunsets and skylines.

Requirements

Next Steps

• Quick Start — add fog to your scene in under 5 minutes.
• Setup — full pipeline configuration and render feature installation.
• Fog Volume Settings — detailed reference for all fog profile parameters.
• Scripting Support (C#) — control fog programmatically at runtime.