Troubleshooting

intermediate troubleshooting

Volumetric Lights 2 (URP) · Troubleshooting & FAQ

Troubleshooting

This page covers the most common issues users encounter with Volumetric Lights 2 for URP and how to resolve them.

Volumetric effect not visible

Symptom	You added a VolumetricLight component but see no effect in the Game view.
Cause	Depth Texture is not enabled in the URP Asset.
Solution	Open your URP Asset and confirm Depth Texture is enabled. Check Project Settings > Quality for per-quality-level URP overrides — enable Depth Texture there too. Verify the light has a non-zero Range and Intensity.

Effect clips through geometry incorrectly

Symptom	Volumetric light appears to clip through walls or floors.
Cause	Inverted depth texture bug in URP (can happen when MSAA and HDR are both off).
Solution	Enable Flip Depth Texture in the Volumetric Light inspector, or enable MSAA or HDR in the URP Asset.

Transparent objects drawn behind the effect

Symptom	Transparent objects (particles, glass, water) appear behind the volumetric effect even though they are in front.
Cause	Transparent objects do not write to the depth buffer.
Solution	Adjust the volumetric light’s Render Queue to be lower than the transparent objects, or Add the Volumetric Light Depth Pre-Pass Render Feature to your URP Renderer. See Transparency Support.

GPU Occlusion Culling breaks after enabling Shadow Occlusion

Symptom	After enabling Shadow Occlusion on a Volumetric Light, GPU Occlusion Culling (URP 17+ with GPU Resident Drawer) stops working or produces incorrect culling.
Cause	The auto-injected `VolumetricLightsDepthRenderer` uses the Forward rendering path (cheapest option for the depth capture it performs). Having a Forward renderer in the URP Asset’s Renderer List can disable GPU Occlusion Culling globally when the rest of the pipeline uses Forward+ or Deferred+.
Solution	Locate the `VolumetricLightsDepthRenderer` asset inside Resources/Shaders/ (or in your URP Asset’s Renderer List). Change its Rendering Path to match your Default Renderer (Forward+, Deferred or Deferred+). No other changes are required. The renderer is self-contained and only used internally by the shadow occlusion depth capture. Trade-off: the depth pre-pass becomes slightly more expensive per shadow-casting light, but GPU Occlusion Culling is preserved.

Shadow issues on Android

Symptom	Shadows appear broken or do not render on Android.
Cause	OpenGL ES limitations on some devices.
Solution	Switch to the Vulkan graphics API in Player Settings > Player.

Visible banding or stepping

Symptom	The volumetric effect shows noticeable color bands or stepping artifacts.
Cause	Insufficient ray-marching quality or dithering/jittering too low.
Solution	Increase Raymarch Quality. Increase Dithering and Jittering values. Enable Use Blue Noise for smoother randomization. If using the Render Feature, increase Blur Passes.

Slow initial build

Symptom	First build takes several minutes.
Cause	Shader variant compilation. Each keyword multiplies variants.
Solution	Strip unused shader keywords. See Build Optimizations.

Orthographic camera not working

Symptom	Effect does not render correctly with an orthographic camera.
Cause	Orthographic support is disabled by default in the shader.
Solution	Enable `ORTHO_SUPPORT` in `Options.hlsl`. See Orthographic Camera Support.

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