Camera-Adherent GPU Particles 1.0.3 — Multi-Light, Forward+, and Hybrid Lighting Upgrade

The 1.0.3 update brings a major visual improvement to the Camera-Adherent GPU Particle system.

This release focuses purely on foreground, camera-facing particle effects—such as wind swirls, impact bursts, weapon trails, magic glows, atmosphere streaks, UI-adjacent FX, and any particle that stays tightly aligned to the screen.

These particles now react to lighting in a way that matches the rest of your scene’s illumination—without losing the performance advantages of a camera-adherent GPU pipeline.

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🌟 1. Full Multi-Light Support (URP Forward & Forward+)

Camera-adherent particles traditionally rely on unlit shading because they live in screen-space rather than world-space.

This update changes that.

• Point lights and spotlights now illuminate camera-aligned GPU particles.

• Correct color, intensity, and distance attenuation are applied.

• Fully compatible with URP Forward+ clustered lighting, enabling dozens of realtime lights on supported hardware.

Even though the particles are screen-aligned, the shading now reflects world lighting conditions—adding depth and realism to close-up effects.

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🌈 2. Hybrid Lighting Pipeline (Auto Per-Pixel / Per-Vertex)

To balance visual fidelity and performance—especially on mobile and mid-range GPUs—the lighting pipeline now adapts automatically:

Material Setup	Lighting Mode	Behavior
Normal Map enabled	Per-Pixel Lighting	High-quality shading for glossy, detailed effects
No Normal Map	Per-Vertex Lighting	High-performance mode without sacrificing color accuracy
Storm Mode enabled	Lighting disabled	Recommended to avoid combining Storm + Lighting

This pipeline ensures that camera-adherent particles stay lightweight while still supporting physically meaningful lighting when needed.

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🌫️ 3. URP Fog Integration

Camera-aligned particles now respect URP fog:

• Smooth depth-aware blending

• Consistent screen-space behavior

• Matches scene mood and atmosphere

This prevents the visual mismatch that screen-aligned particles often have in foggy or atmospheric environments.

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🔧 4. Naming Consistency Improvement

The material parameter:

MaskMap → lightMaskMap

This better reflects its role in controlling specular and emission contribution under the new lighting pipeline.

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📝 1.0.3 Changelog

Fixes

• Renamed MaskMap → lightMaskMap for clarity.

• Fixed an issue where lightMaskMap did not correctly influence specular and emission.

Improvements

• Multi-light support

  • URP Forward & Forward+ clustered lighting

  • Correct color & attenuation

• Hybrid Lighting Pipeline

  • Per-Pixel (normal map) / Per-Vertex (no normal map)

  • Storm Mode disables lighting for consistency

• URP Fog support

  • Proper fog blending for camera-aligned particles

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🎬 Demo Video

Get Camera-Adherent GPU Particles

All SmallBurger Assets on the Unity Asset Store