Update #1:It seems that my problem refers to what soft particles are supposed to fix. Since I am using Unity 2019.1.10f1 and HDRP 5.13 and soft particles are not yet working with the new Shader Graph shaders, I am currently looking into the current pre-release 2019.3.0a10 to be able to install HDRP 6.8.1 where soft particles should work.
Original post:
I suppose there is really no easy if any solution to my problem. I run across it using the Visual Effects Graph or the old Particle System, but I guess the problem/visual artifact isn’t limited to particles alone. The artifact occurs with particles that clip or intersect terrain, leading to unpleasant looking hard horizontal edges when rendering the transparent particle on top of everything opaque. This essentially “reveals” the particles to be flat and non-volumetric.
You can see what I mean near the bottom in this video (it’s hard to make a screenshot of the exact moment when it happens):
Is there any way to somehow fade out the particle (increase its alpha value) near these edges programmatically?
I know its common blending behavior when these were both opaque surfaces but I think we can agree that it is not a welcome visual with transparent surfaces. Is there a name for this “artifact” in graphics?
I use HDRP and I have soft particles enabled in the VFX graph. But since HDRP there isn’t any option for soft particles in the project quality settings. I also neither found it in the new HDRP asset nor the scene settings. Do you know where this option has gone in HDRP?
My bad I just found the option “Soft particles fade distance” in the VFX graph. Upon earlier inspection this didn’t really change my visuals but that was with an early version of my visual effect (sand storm). I cranked the value up to about 8 and it works now.
Yes, I am in the same predicament. A lot of my soft particles have very hard edges when intersecting the ground, or even each other. It looks very bad.
Does Unity plan on addressing this in HDRP? If it hasn’t been already?
Overall getting particles to look great in HDRP has been a real struggle. They don’t seem to “work” as well as in previous versions – but I get that HDRP is still somewhat new.
I just found the option “Soft particles fade distance” in the VFX graph. Upon earlier inspection this didn’t really change my visuals but that was with an early version of my visual effect (sand storm). I cranked the value up to about 8 and it works now.