Post-processing Glow Effect

Stars and planets in space look more natural with a 'glow' around them. This is separate from a traditional bloom glow effect, as seen in the comparison below. For gas giants and earth-like planets, the glow could be parts of the visible atmosphere fading out into space.

Gas Giant Glow — The light-blue glow around the edges of the gas giant is fully adjustable through the 'Planet Glow' component.

This is implemented through a Render Graph post-processing effect with a custom render pass and Fullscreen shader. Relevant scripts are 'PostFXGlowEffect', 'PlanetGlow' and 'StarCorona'. Planets created through the custom menu items have these setup automatically. These require a suitable material attached, see the 'Planet Glow' and 'Star Corona' shaders: Glow Shaders

Planet Glow is occluded by light direction and only shows up on the bright side of planets, whereas Star Corona glow is omni-directional.

Post processing glow and Bloom

The glow effect around planets can be achieved in two ways:

Custom Render Pass Post-Processing Effect
URP Bloom

Corona Glow Comparisons — **Glow Comparisons:** 1. Glow disabled 2. Bloom Glow 3. PostFX Glow 4. PostFX Glow

For best visual fidelity, we recommend using both the Star Corona or Planet Glow post-processing effect and enabling bloom in the URP volume.