Rings, Sun and Corona

Use the supplied multi-renderer prefabs to keep related effects aligned. Rings and stellar layers have their own materials and respond differently from the planet surface.

Customize a gas ring

1. Add Assets/FORGE3D/Planets/Gas/Planet_Gas_01.prefab to a scene copy.
2. Find its ring renderer through Mesh Renderer > Materials and confirm the ring shader.
3. Duplicate the assigned ring material into your own folder and assign the copy.
4. Change Ring Tint RGB for color and alpha for opacity on Ring Transparent.
5. Tune Ring Size and Ring Offset to redistribute radial texture bands. Resize the Transform only if you need to change the geometry itself.
6. Rotate the Directional Light and tune Shadow Vertex and Shadow Penumbra to fit the artistic planet shadow.

Ring Transparent uses Detail Map red for opacity, multiplied by Ring Tint alpha. Texture alpha does not serve that role. It also writes depth, so inspect overlap with atmospheric shells and other transparent objects. Avoid Ring Size = Ring Offset + 1, which collapses the radial mapping span.

Choose a ring shader

Shader	Use	Important difference
Ring Transparent	Translucent bands with an artistic planet shadow	Red-channel opacity, tint alpha, depth writing
Ring Opaque	Solid radial bands in a custom composition	Opaque color with metallic/smoothness controls
Ring Shadow	Alpha-tested radial ring material	Visible white forward output; texture alpha controls clipping

Opaque and Shadow materials are retained assets rather than complete supplied prefab configurations. Their reference images show custom compositions using a supplied ring mesh. Ring Shadow is not an invisible shadow-only renderer feature.

Coordinate Sun and Corona

1. Add Assets/FORGE3D/Planets/Sun/Sun_Blue.prefab to a scene copy.
2. Keep its child arrangement. Identify the materials using the Sun, Sun Corona and Atmosphere shader fields.
3. Copy the materials you want to change and assign them to their original slots.
4. On the surface, choose Cool, Warm and Hot as a coordinated palette. Preserve Hot alpha initially because it also affects flakes.
5. Tune Surface Power and Flakes Power before increasing overall Boost.
6. On the corona, match Corona Color, then tune Corona Falloff and Corona Boost for its radial shape.
7. Enable Depth Texture on the URP asset and camera. Keep Depth Fade nonzero and check intersections at the final scene scale.

Composite stellar close-up at root scale 1200, matching the demo scale. Surface, Corona and Atmosphere remain separate editable layers.

Sun’s shader is unlit visual geometry. Add a Unity Light separately to illuminate planets. Root scale changes also affect the relationship with Corona’s world-unit Depth Fade; a tiny scene copy may need different values. Inspect actual overlaps in your scene instead of relying on depth fade as a universal seam fix.

For all controls and comparisons, see Sun and Sun Corona.