pucklovesgames

Volumetric Clouds Lite

Added 2018-09-20 01:10:50 +0000 UTC

Here's a version of the shader with a bunch of unnecessary additions stripped away, to make it as light as possible while still retaining the same basic look - the only way to make it more performant, as far as I know, is to limit it to Opacity Mask and turn off Alpha-Blend, which would only work if you're going for more stylised clouds. With a small enough cloud height, it gets away with only drawing 10 layered quads. It can only be viewed from underneath however, and there's less control over the lighting.

Even if you're not interested in performance, there's some other fixes that might be worth looking at:

I've also separated the primary and secondary noise into two textures, which gives more control over the look of the clouds and also means you can drop the primary texture size down to a ridiculous 32x32 pixels, without compromising the effect.

The only other change is automatically getting the cloud material in script from the current material, rather than having to set it manually, because that feels neater and less error-prone.

Let me know in the comments or discord if there's any other improvements you want to see or think could be made. Thanks!

UPDATE: I've also added a version (of the 3d noise) with the Directional Light completely stripped out - much more performance, and it still holds up right? Give it a go if you're targeting VR or mobile, and let me know if you seen any fps improvements.