H Volumetric Fog URP (Performant volumetric lighting and fog for URP)

Real froxel volumetric fog and light shafts for URP. Cinematic, art-directable, and cheap.

Inspired by HDRP's froxel volumetric lighting, adapted and expanded for URP.

URP still ships without true volumetric fog. You get flat exponential fog, or you fake beams with billboards - no god-rays, no dusty air, no light actually scattering through the scene.

❓ The Problem

❌ Flat URP fog can't do light shafts, height layers or volumetric depth

❌ Particle/card "fake beams" ignore your lights and shadows

❌ Real volumetric fog has meant expensive, hard-to-ship setups

✅ The Solution

A froxel (3D voxel) fog volume. Light scatters through it, so your directional, point and spot lights cast real, shadow-aware shafts - all driven from a Volume, like URP's own post-processing.

⚡ Performance

Compute-based froxel integration on the RenderGraph path, with quality tiers that scale froxel resolution and step count. Noise, phase and sampling are all optimized - in our own scenes it's genuinely hard to even spot in the profiler. Developed and tested on Unity 6+ / URP 17+ (RenderGraph).

🎯 Features

• Light shafts / god-rays from sun, point and spot lights

• Shadow-aware beams (soft 4-tap PCF) — geometry blocks the fog correctly

• Animated 3D noise for drifting, living fog

• Height fog + distance fog

• Per-light overrides: side scatter, beam reach, shaft rolloff, tint, intensity

• Decoupled fog intensity vs ambient, plus a GI dimmer

• Quality tiers (resolution / step count)

• Temporal reprojection with neighbourhood clamping for a stable, low-noise image

• One Render Feature + a Volume — no scene rework

• RenderGraph native. Full source. No DLLs.

🛠️ Easy Setup

✔ Add the Render Feature to your Universal Renderer

✔ Add the Volume override and dial in the look

✔ (Optional) Drop per-light overrides on the lights you want to art-direct

⚠️ Good to know

• Unity 6+ / URP 17+ with RenderGraph only — it uses the modern compute + RenderGraph path

• Needs a compute-capable GPU (no GLES2)

• It's a froxel system: very long-range fog detail is bounded by the froxel range/resolution you choose — higher tiers cost more

• Hard camera cuts can show a touch of temporal softening (clamped, rarely noticeable)

🧨 Battle Tested in Production

Built for our own game, not a tech demo. H_AutoExposure exists because Silent Strike - our in-development tactical shooter - needed believable exposure as players move between dark interiors and bright exteriors, at effectively no cost. It's been hardened in real scenes and real player builds, in actual gameplay.

📍 See for yourself

Download demo here.

💬 Support

Need help or have questions?

📩 Email: assetsupport@hworksinteractive.com

💬 Discord (fast & friendly support): https://discord.gg/4UB6x2bVge