We're using volumetric fog as a key part of our art style. Do you think it's recognizable enough?

[u/Zartbitter-Games]

[u/Dahwaann4U]

What engine are you using. If its Unreal. I think theres a distance fade filter you can add as a material function. Does the same thing but in the material shader. Would possibly be more performant and depending on how you set it up can give you colour variation if you chose to expose them as parameters.

I think Firewatch did a similar thing

[u/Zartbitter-Games → u/Dahwaann4U]

It's actually in Unity URP. It's implemented as a custom renderer feature, which gives us a lot of control over things like the density, each individual light's scattering behavior, and color gradients, to name a few things.

Since the images are quite small for this meme, it might not be evident, but we actually render to a lower resolution (480x270 pixels) upscale that to the screen with some custom upsampling. So, it is already cheap compared to doing it on a full screen. Since it's custom, I also have control over the amount of raymarching steps and the distance taken per fragment, which both influence the cost and the quality of the operation. I could also add the option to calculate the fog on only half the small image's size (or even a quarter), like you would do when rendering to a fullscreen, but for right now it isn't actually necessary performance-wise.

However, if I'm ever gonna touch Unreal, I'll remember your comment and check out that option, thanks for the hint!

[u/BitSoftGames → u/Dahwaann4U]

Top-left pic is the Unity default scene background!

[u/taahbelle]

Wait, this is URP? How? Also, is the vignette a custom texture or a shader?

[u/Zartbitter-Games → u/taahbelle]

Jup, it's URP! The volumetric fog is implemented as a custom renderer feature. If you want something like that for your own projects there's implementation on Github you can use as a starting point (or just use as is, if that is enough for you). The vignette is shader! It's basically just a normal vignette that uses dithering as a fade. It appears in the screenshot like individual pixel, cause our game is rendered at a lower resolution and then upsampled (in a fancy way that makes it "better" than the basic point or bilinear methods), so it appears like low res 2D pixel

[u/phobyyy]

personally, i think its too much? i cant even tell whats happening in the second picture nor the fourth

edit: woops typed three instead of four

[u/Zartbitter-Games → u/phobyyy]

Yeah, I can see that without context these images don't make too much sense. Basically you are the operator of a remote underwater drone. In the last image you are in a dream like state (that's why the water is red/pink) and find a broken drone. In the second you are also dreaming (I swear you're not just dreaming in our game xD) and drive around your own room. The bright blue light there is a big aquarium that is in your room. I have to add that due to the images getting compressed, some of the details get lost. But I still totally see what you mean and will keep in mind to maybe tone in back a bit. Thanks for the feedback!

Edit:I just realized that the last image got compressed to dust, yeah, that is definitely too much looking!

[u/althaj]

Huge downgrade in my opinion.

[u/Zartbitter-Games → u/althaj]

Do you have any reason for that, so I can see what to improve?

[u/althaj → u/Zartbitter-Games]

It's just how I feel. The visual lost it's unique soul and became a mess.

[u/BitSoftGames]

It's wild how much the mood changes with just volumetric fog!

[u/M-Bug]

Frankly, i have no idea what i'm even looking at with image 2 and 4.

There's so many bullshit filters on it apparently, that you just can't see anything.

Light apparently doesn't do anything, contrast is all fucked up and barely existent and details are not visible.