Volumetric Nebula Generator – Fly-Through 3D Space Nebulae (URP & HDRP)

Generate your own truly volumetric, fly-through space nebulae in the Unity Editor: millions of seeds, 26 colour looks, six controls. URP + HDRP in one package, 10 demo scenes.

• In-editor nebula generator: seed 1 – 999999, 26 colour looks, 6 controls (Cores, Pillars, Dust Amount, Gas Amount, Streamers, Veils)
• GPU bake in the editor (12 bake shaders, compiled once per project); ~20 – 40 s per nebula on an RTX 3090
• Each nebula: Nebula Profile, five 3D textures (364×180×96, RGBA half) and an 8192×4096 star sky (BC6H in builds)
• 10 example nebulae, 20 demo scenes (10 URP + 10 HDRP)
• Components: Nebula Volume, Nebula Fly Camera, Nebula Generator; URP renderer feature, HDRP custom pass; menus under Tools > Volumetric Nebula Generator
• Custom ray-marching shaders (Shader Model 5.0) with temporal filtering; quality presets Low / Medium / High / Epic
• Scale x0.25 – x16, rotated copies 0 – 8, gas animation, live colour Look (per profile or per scene)
• Unity 2022.3 and above; URP or HDRP; Built-in RP not supported
• Documentation: README + PDF manual; namespace VolumetricNebulaGenerator

▶ 4K video showcase: https://youtu.be/W8jmhdjGCYo

▶ Quick Start (3 min): https://youtu.be/rV06nFL1pAw

Generate your own fly-through space nebulae – right inside the Unity Editor

Pick a seed and a colour look, press Generate Nebula, and about half a minute later you fly through a brand-new, truly volumetric nebula: bright star-forming cores in blown-out cavities, dark dust pillars with lit rims, curved shells, long dust lanes, streamers, thin veils and thick opaque dust, with a deep-field star and galaxy sky behind. This is not a skybox: the gas and dust are rendered in 3D around the camera, so you can fly into, through and around them.

URP and HDRP in one package. Every nebula is saved as normal Unity assets you can use in any scene and in your builds.

✦ GENERATE

• Millions of seeds – every seed is a different nebula: layout, cores, walls, pillars, lanes, fine structure and its own star sky
• 26 colour looks – 24 the seed chooses from, plus two Hubble-palette looks (royal blue / teal glow, gold rims)
• Six artistic controls – Cores, Pillars, Dust Amount, Gas Amount, Streamers, Veils; each changes only its own part, so the seed stays recognisable
• Try Nebula / Keep Last Try – try as many seeds as you like without filling your project, keep the one you like in a moment without baking again
• ~20 – 40 s per nebula on an RTX 3090; the generator adapts to slower GPUs automatically (Safe Mode for integrated graphics)

✦ CUSTOMISE – LIVE, NO NEW BAKE

• Gas palette – Gas Outer, Gas Mid and Gas Core (HDR colours)
• Dust – Rim Color for the lit rims, Dust Glow inside the dust
• Grading – Saturation, Hue Shift, Emission Gain, Density Scale
• Star sky – Star Cut, Star Gain, Sky Exposure, Sky Tint
• Per profile or per scene – edit a nebula's Look, or tick Override Look on one Nebula Volume; every value can be set from C#

✦ FEATURES

• Fly inside – the nebula surrounds the camera 360°, with gas and dust at every depth
• Four quality presets – Low, Medium (default), High, Epic
• Scale x0.25 – x16 – the whole nebula grows, same look and same cost at every size
• Rotated copies – one huge, continuous nebula with the same close-up detail
• Slow, natural gas animation – on by default
• Self-lit, composited over your scene – no lights needed; objects inside the nebula are fogged naturally
• Works in the Scene view while you edit
• Lives next to our Volumetric Nebula Skyboxes packs in the same project – own folder, namespace and menus

✦ WHAT'S INSIDE

• The generator – editor only, never in your builds
• 10 example nebulae made with the generator
• 20 demo scenes – 10 for URP, 10 for HDRP, each with a fly camera and a Nebula Generator
• Nebula Volume and Nebula Fly Camera components, URP renderer feature (one-click setup), HDRP custom pass
• Documentation – README and a 23-page PDF manual: every button, setting and workflow, step by step

✦ PERFORMANCE

90+ FPS at native 4K on the default Medium preset (RTX 3090, built player: URP 101 FPS, HDRP 91 FPS, average of the 10 demo scenes). Only the nebula is traced at reduced resolution and filtered over several frames – the rest of your frame stays at full resolution, no upscaling.

✦ DEMO CONTROLS

• WASD fly · E / Q up / down · mouse look · wheel flight speed
• 1 – 4 quality · 5 – 8 size · B cycle size · R copies · G gas animation
• C colour variation · X colours as designed · N / P next / previous demo scene

✦ REQUIREMENTS

• Unity 2022.3 and above, URP or HDRP (one package, each pipeline folder compiles only with its pipeline)
• Generating: Unity Editor on Windows, DirectX 11 or 12, 4 GB of video memory or more
• Not supported: Built-in Render Pipeline, VR / XR single-pass

✦ USE CASES

Space games and flight sims · sci-fi cinematics and trailers · menu and title backgrounds · space-station and planet backdrops