Buto Volumetric Fog: Patch 1.3

About the Patch

We heard from our users that Volumetric Point Light support is a key feature when thinking about a Volumetric Lighting and Fog asset for Unity. We understand that Volumetric spotlights are also important, but less critical when looking at an initial release. So, we decided to release Volumetric Point Lights first as part of Buto 1.3 and intend to update Buto later on with support for spotlights.

Patch Notes for Buto 1.3

Volumetric Point Lights can now be configured to work with Buto, with support for up to 8 fog-enabled volumetric point lights in scene simultaneously. Note that Volumetric point lighting does not support shadow attenuation.

What is a Volumetric Point Light?

Volumetric lighting is a method used to represent light interacting with a non-zero-density medium, such as air or fog. Volumetric point lights are used to describe a single point where the light originates from. The light is emitted in all directions equally and is attenuated according to the standard light attenuation algorithms. You can see an example of these volumetric point lights in the screenshot from Buto’s demo scene above.

Update Aug 31, 2022:

Buto is now more flexible when using more than 8 fog-enabled volumetric point lights. This game asset will now automatically cull all but the nearest 8 volumetric point lights in the scene, enabling you to have more flexibility when editing and crafting your scene. Note that we have also improved the quality of these Volumetric Point Lights in a subsequent bug-fix release where we fixed an algorithm used in Buto’s point light representation.

You can set up any Game Object to act as Volumetric Point Light by adding a Buto Light component to the Game Object.

Buto Lights can inherit the characteristics (such as Intensity and Color) of a Light component on the same Game Object so that your lighting environment is consistent across Volumetric and non-Volumetric types of light. For example, if your Buto Light component is set to inherit from the Light component and your Light Component has a Color of white and an Intensity of 1, then your Buto Volumetric Light will also have a Color of white and an Intensity of 1.

However, you are not required to inherit from the Light component. So, you could have a Light component with completely different settings than the corresponding Volumetric Point Light. In fact, you are not even required to have a Light component associated to the Buto Volumetric Light at all.

Click here to learn more about Buto.

Update Aug 31, 2022:

Buto has added support for Fog Density Masks as well! Fog Density Masks enable you to describe areas where Fog is more intense, less intense, or areas where fog is allowed to render. Learn more about Fog Density Masks.

More about Buto Volumetric Fog for Unity

Lightning fast, infinitely customizable volumetric lighting and fog. Set up in 60 seconds or less.

Click here to shop Buto on the Unity Marketplace.

Buto Overview

Your game has no atmosphere. It needs some.

Lightning fast, infinitely customizable volumetric lighting and fog. Set up in 60 seconds. Join 230 game devs already experiencing the future of volumetrics.

Buto’s Key Features

1. Physically based: Our volumetric lighting and fog accurately renders atmospheric particles and light scattering using algorithms described in leading technical papers and strategies from major AAA studios.
2. Volumetric Lighting and Shadow: Objects realistically occlude lighting from interacting with the fog, keeping your fog grounded in your scene.
3. Fast: Optimized, high-performance rendering with intelligent depth-aware upscaling (~0.7ms on an Nvidia 1080 desktop equivalent).
4. Volumetric Noise: Built-in volumetric noise gives depth and texture to the particle distribution.
5. Atmospheric Height Fog: Particle density exponentially decreases over height, resulting in realistic fog attenuation over altitude.
6. Long-Range Visual Consistency: Analytic height fog is rendered behind the nearby ray-marched volumetric fog, guaranteeing visual realism over long distances.
7. Stylized Fog Options: Distance-based Color Ramps, Color Ramp influence, and Light and Shadow intensity sliders give you creative stylized fog options.
8. Additional Lights: Point lights can now be configured to work with Buto, with support for up to 8 concurrent fog-enabled point lights.
9. Fog Density Masks: Place fog exactly where you want it with up to 8 concurrent Fog Density Masks.
10. Temporal Anti-Aliasing: Improved quality for high density fog with optional Temporal Anti-Aliasing.
11. Integrated with the Volume Component System: Seamlessly tie Volumetric Fog into your workflow with Unity's Volume Component system. Set Global Fog parameters and local Box and Sphere Volume parameters with seamless blending between Fog Volume settings.

Fast, Helpful Support for Buto

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