Introduction

What is Volumetric Lights 2?

Volumetric Lights 2 is a high-performance volumetric lighting solution for Unity's Built-in Render Pipeline. It adds realistic god rays, light shafts, and atmospheric scattering to your scenes using an optimized ray-marching algorithm — with minimal impact on frame rate.

This version was built from scratch for the Built-in pipeline and is not compatible with URP or HDRP. If you are using the Universal Render Pipeline, see Volumetric Lights 2 (URP) instead.

Key Features

Volumetric Lighting Effects

• Point, Spot & Area lights — full volumetric support for all Built-in light types.
• Simple & Volumetric modes — choose between a fast simplified effect or full ray-marched volumetric mode.
• Profiles — save and reuse volumetric light configurations via ScriptableObject profiles.
• Dust particles — built-in particle system with a custom shader that respects the light volume geometry.

Shadows & Translucency

• Shadow occlusion — per-light shadow maps with configurable resolution, culling mask, and bake intervals.
• Translucent shadow maps — captures colors of transparent objects using the Volumetric Lights Translucency script.
• Colored shadows — shadow color passes through translucent surfaces for realistic stained-glass effects.

Quality & Performance

• Direct light cast — projects volumetric light onto opaque surfaces (deferred rendering path).
• Post-process component — global downscaling, bilateral blur, dithering, and HDR support.
• Auto-toggle (LOD) — distance-based dimming and deactivation for scenes with many lights.
• Blue noise dithering — reduces banding and moire patterns for smoother results.
• Custom bounds — clip the volumetric effect to specific areas of the scene.

Official Trailer

Next Steps

• Quick Start — get your first volumetric light running in under 5 minutes.
• Parameters Reference — detailed explanation of every inspector setting.
• Scripting Support — control volumetric lights from C# code.