Hello, I have been working with Unity for some time now and I have not been able to figure this out. I have been using particle effects that I have created, as well as particle systems that come in Unity’s Standard Assets packages, but they all seem to illuminate anything that is behind them. For example, the windmill in the attached picture is far away and is not normally visible from such a distance as it is too dark, but if I look at it through the smoke particle effect, it becomes visible. The same thing happens if I look at anything else through the smoke, fire, fog, or any other particle effects that I have used. Is there a way to fix this and make so that the particles do not illuminate anything that is behind them? In other words, can I modify the particle systems so that they block anything from view that is behind them? Thanks for the help in advance!
How are you making things dark in the distance? It looks like you’re using some kind of post process image effect fog that’s being applied after transparencies. Is there a reason you’re using that instead of Unity’s built in fog?
The problem is any post process fog doesn’t work on transparent objects as the depth texture that those types of effects work off of only have the depth for opaque objects. So this kind of fog needs to only by applied after opaque objects have rendered and before transparent, and then have transparent objects use shaders that do the fog calculations themselves.
I just turned down the lighting multiplier for the environmental lighting and environment reflections in Unity’s light settings. That way there is no lighting other than the light cast by the player’s light source.
Then it might just be a side effect of using additive shaders. Try to stick to Alpha Blend? Might also be some odd case where you have a dark particle system that’s being occluded by an object, but is rendering after a brighter particle system that is not being occluded. With out seeing more of your setup it’s hard to say.
Finally figured it out. I tried your solution and nothing worked, but I realized that I was rendering a cloud sphere around the environment, for a cloud effect. I made this sphere before deciding that the environment would be dark, rendering the sphere pointless. But anyways, the sphere was messing up the lighting and causing the issue. I removed it and adjusted the lighting settings, fixing the problem. Thanks for the help though!