Deformable Snow & Ice Shader — Trails, Footprints, Terrain

Technical Details

• Render pipelines: URP (Unity 6 / URP 17) and Built-in, in the same shader (Unity picks the right SubShader)
• Unity version: 6000.3+ 
• Tessellation: distance-based, crack-free. A non-tessellated fallback is chosen automatically.
• Trails: world-space trail texture (256–4096) that follows the player and scrolls. Refill speed is adjustable.
• Trail sources: 64 emitters / stamps per frame, plus unlimited particles and meshes on the trail layer
• Rendering: Forward and Forward+ (URP). Deferred cameras render the snow as forward-only.
• Input: works with the Input System package or the legacy Input Manager
• Code: C# with assembly definitions (compiles without URP or the Input System installed), full source included
• Textures: procedurally generated, tileable snow / ice / crack maps (512²). Regenerate them from the Tools menu.

Bring winter scenes to life: anything that moves leaves trails in deep, soft snow. Snow piles up at the edges of each trail and slowly fills back in over time. Snow and frozen ice share a single material, so you paint where the ice goes. It works in URP and the Built-in pipeline, on meshes and on Unity Terrain.

Key Features

• Interactive trails. Emitters, footprints, particle systems or a single script call push the snow down, and the snow rises around the trail.
• Tessellation only on snow, near the camera. A fallback without tessellation is included for older hardware.
• Snow + ice in one material, painted with the built-in Splat Painter or with vertex colors.
• Glossy ice with deep color, reflections and layered parallax cracks inside it.
• Colored shadows: shadows turn soft blue instead of black.
• Soft snow lighting: translucency, rim glow and sparkles that twinkle as the camera moves.
• All lights: point and spot lights cast shadows on the snow. Lightmaps and reflection probes are supported.
• Snow on any object: the Slope Limit keeps snow only on upward-facing surfaces.
• Snow Coverage slider for snowfall or melting, great for weather systems.
• Terrain support: one-click terrain setup, plus a Terrain-to-Mesh converter for other terrain tools.
• Drag-and-drop prefabs: Trail System, Trail Emitter, Footprints, Particle Brush, Mouse Trail, Snow Ground and Snowy Rock.
• Demo scene that works in both pipelines.

Perfect For

• Winter, survival and exploration games
• Racing and sledding (tire and ski tracks)
• Character footprints in adventure and RPG games
• Holiday / Christmas scenes and cozy games
• Frozen lakes, ice caves and arctic levels
• Weather systems (snowfall and melting)