Cinematic Car Paint (URP)

Bring cinematic realism to vehicles in URP with layered physically based paint, under-coat decals, live rain sim, procedurally simulated rust that grows and multi-bounce ray-traced RT reflections

Key features

• Car-paint shader: base coat, six metallic-flake families, clear coat, pearl, iridescence, candy coat depth
• Object-space under-clearcoat decals (two decal slots) and overlay layer
• Procedural rust!! and simulated rust-growth history with runtime bake (for performance at runtime)
• GPU rain simulation on bodywork; glass-rain shader for windows - channeling into divets and with the body shape
• DXR reflection renderer feature: multi-bounce, streams nearby geometry with acceleration builds and tiling, LOD-aware, supports foliage!
• Vehicle-following reflection probe component (no DXR needed) for non raytraced realtime reflections using standard cubemapping
• Over 20 paint and glass material presets
• Demo scene and user manual included

List of VFXs included

Car paint (base coat, metallic flake, clear coat, pearl, iridescence, candy), under-clearcoat decals, procedural rust/decay, simulated rust growth, bodywork rain, glass rain, ray-traced reflections, vehicle reflection probe.

Texture sizes

No textures required; all paint, flake, rust and rain effects are procedural.

Number of VFXs

2 material shaders, 2 renderer features (rain, DXR reflections), over 20 material presets.

Custom shaders

Areopagus/Cinematic Car Paint and Areopagus/Cinematic Car Glass Rain, plus internal helper, compute and ray-tracing shaders used by the renderer features.

Compatibility

- Unity 6000.5 (6.5), URP 17.5; Built-in and HDRP not supported

- Forward, Forward+, Deferred and Deferred+ supported

- DXR reflections (optional, experimental): Windows, DirectX 12, DXR-capable GPU; AMD 6000+ or RTX-class recommended, tested from a 9070XT down down to a GTX 1060 3gb

- DXR reflects rigid MeshRenderers; skinned meshes not supported for the ray traced reflections

- Tested only on Windows 11 builds

Support: support@areopagus.engineering

When you want to look good, fast.

Drive (pun intended) a vehicle from showroom finish to wet, weathered or heavily corroded bodywork with one material: a layered automotive shader, object-space decals under the clear coat, GPU rain simulation across bodywork and glass consistent in the vehicle space, an editor rust-growth workflow, and even hardware ray-traced reflections! We packed as much cinematic realism into this to push URP to its limits!

Documentation

Layered automotive paint

The shader models the layers of a real automotive finish: base coat, metallic flakes and clear coat, with optional pearl and iridescent films and candy coat depth. Six flake pigment families range from aluminium cornflake to holographic, and distance-aware filtering keeps flakes from shimmering as the vehicle moves away. Start from one of over 20 supplied materials or build your own finish in the grouped inspector.

Under-clearcoat decals

Place stripes, race numbers and wraps in object space, sized in millimetres and rendered beneath the clear coat. No dedicated UV layout is needed, and projection diagnostics show scale and alignment problems while you set up a vehicle.

Rain across the body and glass

Droplets are simulated on the GPU across the vehicle surface. They land, bead and pin to the paint, then break loose and run downhill, leaving trails and wetting the panels. The vehicle's own motion sweeps water rearwards. A matching glass shader covers the windscreen and windows.

Comprehensive Rust simulation

Peeled paint, bare metal, rusting layers - all entirely procedural. An editor simulation grows a corrosion history across the vehicle's geometry: from sills, seams and panel edges into larger colonies, across small gaps between panels. Bake it and a single control moves the vehicle from clean paint to advanced corrosion at runtime.

Ray-traced reflections

A DXR renderer feature reflects scene geometry on or off screen, with reflections inside reflections when multiple bounces are set. Without ray-tracing hardware the paint uses reflection probes, and the included probe component follows the vehicle. A custom raytracing acceleration set allows extreme realism of your scene OFF CAMERA reflections. Performance is tuned bu a vehicle-local radius, LOD group support and reflection render scale and tiling.

Modular setup

The paint works with just the material. Add the vehicle component for rain, decals and simulated rust, and the renderer features only for the systems you want.