Volumetric Fog & Mist - AAA realistic and animated fog, dust, low clouds and mist

Hi community!

This is the official Unity forum thread for both Volumetric Fog & Mist. Please note that Volumetric Fog & Mist 2 is also available which is a bundle that contains both the built-in and URP versions of the asset. The URP asset is a complete rewrite of the built-in version and, while it provides the same kind of visual results, includes many more features, like spot and point light shadows which are not available in the built-in version.

Most of the comments in the first pages are related to the built-in version as the URP version was released a few years after.

Volumetric Fog & Mist is a full-screen image effect that adds realistic, live, moving Fog, Mist, dust and Sky Haze to your scenes making them less dull and boring. We're really excited to release this new asset for Unity!

Simply add the main script to your camera and you're set.

Volumetric Fog & Mist is the enhanced version of Dynamic Fog & Mist (which is also included) and has been designed to provide a better looking fog and ground-level cloud formations with support of lighting and glow effects.

Comes with 12 configuration presets for quick setup & run: mist, windy mist, low cloud formation, sea of clouds, ground fog, frosted ground, foggy lake, fog and heavy fog, smoke, toxic swamp and two sand storm variations.

You can customize the following features of the fog:
- Density, noise strength and scale
- Height, distance and distance fall-off
- Alpha and albedo
- Specular color, threshold and intensity
- Light direction, color and intensity
- Wind speed and direction
- Height of sky haze, speed, noise strength and alpha.

In addition to the above, Volumetric Fog & Mist includes advanced features like fog volumes, elevated/floating fog, void areas, fog of war effect, point light support, light scattering, enhanced sprite 2D support and compatibility with Gaia, Time of Day and Horizon(ON).

Check out the videos and screenshots below and the asset page for more details or visit kronnect.com for more info, more assets and questions/support. Thanks!

Asset Store link: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/49858

Video 1:

Video 2:

And of course, in URP you can get this kind of effects:

Enjoy!

 

Wow! Nice work

 

Thank you. I can't wait to see what you can do with this effect guys!

 

is it VR compatible?

 

Dynamic Fog & Mist vs Volumetric Fog & Mist ?

what's the difference?

 

@JuMa_ not tested yet with VR.

@gameDevi we explain the differences here: http://kronnect.me/taptapgo/index.php?topic=1485.0

 

Thanks

 

Hi,
I was wondering if its possible to use Fog volumes in a large interior space, in which interior doesn't have any fog but fog is still visible thru the window exteriors?
Asking because at the moment Volumes seems like only controlling the overall visibility. Is it possible to create fog-less areas in the middle of the fog?
Thanks

 

Hello! That's something being worked out for next release.

 

Hi guys!
We have just released V1.3 of Volumetric Fog & Mist on kronnect.com. Soon it will be available on the Asset Store.
Following this release, V2.0 will include support for indoor environments.

Check out the new features in the video below: improved support for transparent objects and elevated fog & clouds!
Purchase it now on the Asset Store and visit kronnect.com for the upgrade!

Thanks!

 

Hi guys!

V2.0 beta 1 is now available on kronnect.com featuring custom "void areas".

A void area can be defined setting a world space position, a radius and a falloff. That zone will show a void inside the fog as demonstrated in the video below. This new feature is great for 3rd person view or for indoor environments (just set the position to the center of the room, set the radius, and the fog won't enter that room!).

This feature is similar to Distance fog option, but the implementation is different. Distance fog option only works for 1st person view, since the distance is calculated from the camera.

Check out our Christmas Holidays Sales & Deals on kronnect.com!

 

Can you have multiple void areas or are you restricting to only having one?

 

Only one at this moment. It is intended to have your character visible in the middle of the fog in 3rd person view games or to create special effects.
You can change the position in real time of course.

 

V1.3 is now available which improves transparent objects handling. Please watch the video below for a demo:

 

Do you have any examples where you use different sun colours. I would like to see the fog picking them up

 

Well, you gave me a good idea so I've implemented some changes and it can now "follow" automatically the Sun. Thank you Adam.

 

To make things easier, I have added a "Sun property" in the inspector. When you set this new property, the light direction, intensity and color will be automatically synced with that reference. As always, here's a short video demonstrating the thing:

There's a new beta on kronnect.com for all customers now.
Thanks and Happy Christmas to everyone!

 

Very nice - that adds so much more value

 

Hello, I have some questions regarding the asset:
1. Can I create a "black" fog using this asset? I am looking for a fog which in a way, simulates the look of smoke.
2. The scales in my scene are not standard. For example, a 1m unity cube is about is about 1/20 of a meter in my scene. Can the fog asset handle this this? Are there tweakable settings to handle out-of-oridinary scene scales? I ask because the Unity global fog standard assets seems to not be able to handle this situation,

Thank you

 

Hi!

Regarding black smoke, yes, you can create both terrain level smoke or floating smoke, like in these images. Volumetric Fog & Mist includes a "smoke" preset.
I'm not sure how scaling could affect but in this scene the cubes use different random scales, from very tiny to quite big:





Nevertheless, if you find any issue or have any suggestion while working with the asset, we'd be very pleased to evaluate and implement it. Just drop by kronnect.com and check out latest betas/releases and our support forum. Thanks!

 

Ok, thanks. Is it possible to have both terrain level smoke AND floating smoke at the same time?

 

Not currently, as the baseline height parameter affect entire fog effect. One approximation could be adding a second camera effect, Dynamic Fog & Mist (which is also included in the package) to simulate the ground smoke (use windy mist preset and change color of the mist to dark brown/black).

 

Does Volumetric Fog & Mist handle particle effects with transparency? For example, I have a water fountain particle effect. I'd like it to disappear into the fog as I get farther away.

 

The fog will be rendered behind the particles.

I have created a test scene where you can see how some particles behave with Volumetric Fog & Mist with smoke preset:

 

Thanks for creating the test scene. That made it very clear.

 

Version 2.1 is now available on the Asset Store, featuring automatic Sun tracking and internal improvements.

 

Version 2.2 available as well!

In this update the following improvements were added:

- Distance range: now you can define the ending distance for the fog (as with height). Setting a distance max. is useful to improve performance but also to create smooth distance ending for the fog creating localised areas of fog in front of you, instead of infinite fog.

- Boxed void areas: in addition to spherical void areas, you can now define a box around a point in world space and a falloff, so that area will be clear of fog. This option is useful to focus the action around a squared area/volume, making the fog surround that area of terrain.

 

Hi! A few new screenshots showing Volumetric Fog & Mist working with Horizon(ON):

 

Video time...!

 

Check out this cool trailer of Marble Mountain from Lightning Rock studios for a nice use case of Volumetric Fog & Mist:

 

Hi Thrawn75

Would it be possible to define multiple void areas, so as to create essentially pockets of fog clearings within a map? Ideally it would be done using a trigger/collider placed during level design.

Your system does pretty much everything else I need aside from that, so if this is the case, then you've got a new customer.

 

Hi Rico,
That's an option we're evaluating - including sort of fog of war mechanics into Volumetric Fog like in upcoming World Map Strategy Kit:

We won't be using colliders on our end, but you will be able to call a function to clear the fog at custom positions. Like ClearFogAt(worldPos).

As said, this is experimental - we'll post here some progress when ready.

Cheers.

 

Awesome, well, definitely keep me posted. I'll need this functionality to define fog clearings for indoor areas and such on a map.

As far as the trigger/collider no problem, I can implement that myself as long as I'm allowed to specify multiple void areas. Let me know as soon as you guys have it ready and you've got a customer!

 

V3 is now available on the Asset Store with internal improvements and a new downsampling option to boost performance on low-end machines.

This is the new inspector look:

 

Hi dudes, we have the new beta with Fog of War feature. Check out the quick video below:

Simply set any number of void areas calling a single function call with world space coordinates position, radius and desired alpha.

 

Here's another video of the feature:

 

Hi!
I'm happy to announce V3.1 with "Fog of War" feature is now available on the Asset Store:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/49858

 

awesome!! love your work

 

Thanks!

A new update has been released today making it compatible with RenderTexture.
Check out the demo/video below:

 

@Thrawn75 is it possible to add an additional light object to influence the light direction and intensity? Lets say you have a Sun/moon as the original/main target and maybe it's evening or night but you have lightning that should also need to illuminate the clouds (maybe not the whole cloud -perhaps the ability to fine tune/adjust the light spread of the lightening and the intensity of the hotspot/source.

 

That's an awesome suggestion and it's in line with latest features being included which will allow you to color the fog with unlimited (existing or virtual) point lights.
I will post here some news very soon.

 

I just purchased your product and am really happy with how it looks as well. However, I have two issues. First of all, I'm using Unity 5.3.1. The first problem is that whenever I play my scene the component settings reset to default values. This is quite frustrating. Also, is there a way I can change the layer or render order of the effect? I included a picture depicting how my particles and player are not being affected by the fog render. I'm trying a 2D characters in 3D space thing and rendering this fog correctly would be a huge boon to my game's look and feel. I look forward to any suggestions! Thanks for reading

 

Hi!
Thanks for purchasing.

1) To preserve your changes to the settings, just switch to "Custom" preset. This way, values will be preserved.
2) Just remove [ImageEffectOpaque] from OnRenderImage in the VolumetricFog.cs script.

Most important. V3.2 has been submitted to the Asset Store and it includes LOT of improvements to this asset - for instance, it has a new toggle to choose the rendering order with regards to transparent objects. You may however download it right now from our website on kronnect.com - just send me a pm with your invoice number after signing up on the support forum.

Cheers!

 

Indeed,

Thanks for your super quick response!! I will try your suggestions and report back

 

It appears your suggestions worked! However, as you can see from the image, there is still some funny ordering happening. Both the terrain and 3d objects seem to affect the fog rendering over my 2D characters. One thing to note is that I'm using my own render ordering script that places character and npc/enemy sprites and particle effects in a layer and orders them based on the distance to the camera. I imagine that has something to do with it, but hopefully your new release's handling of transparent objects will solve this. Anyway, for now I'll try to find some solution on my end and see if changing my layer ordering script has any effect! Thanks again!

[Edited: Uploaded the pic!]
Oh also, I'm using RTP3 for my terrain shader, but since the box is doing the same thing I figured I wouldn't mention it before. But well, there it is anyway

 

Hi there!

We have just released V3.3 b1 with a new optional custom material/shader for Sprites. The idea is that you simply assign this new material to your sprites, and then they will respect the image effects without requiring you to modify any shader or changing your Sprite workflow.

Check out the video below for a demo:

 

V3.3 is now available on the Asset Store:

New Features:
- New World Edge preset: adds misty fog around terrain to close the gap between it and the sky/void.
- Compatibility with Gaia: you can now select the included presets with a single click from Gaia manager. Some improvements have been implemented to make it even easier to auto-configure with Gaia.
- Compatibility with Time of Day: just add the Sun game object from the sky dome to the Sun property in the inspector to sync the day/night light conditions with the fog.
- Ability to render either in front or behind transparent objects with a single click (inspector)
- Enhanced compatibility with Sprite and Sprite Renderer: the asset includes a new Sprite shader and material to make 2D sprites look great with Image Effects like this (the sample scene now features a funny 2D elephant as an example).

Improvements
- Ability to assign a gameobject (character) to make the void area follow it automatically.
- Ability to follow camera height automatically or set baseline with respect to the camera.
- Improved preset auto configuration, now detects water level
- Improved algorithm, distance fog looks great including better falloff.

Fixes:
- Compatibility with Render Texture (Demo Scene 3 included, check video below)
- Fixed issues with different height base lines.

 

Great asset! Is there or could there be a way to add settings in the fog volumes? This would give each area different fog settings using multiple zones objects.
Thanks!

 

Thanks! Currently just alpha, are there any specific settings you would like to control or all of them?

 

All would be great heheh but the most important would be The Fog geometry settings, Fog Style settings, maybe Haze...
Also, is there a way to go negative on the Fog geometry Height? I seem to be hitting the low end and would lobe to go lower so I could use it as misty smoke in my swamp waters. Its pretty deep underground...
Thanks!