NITRATE: The Mill

A 15-second seamless loop rendered in real time in Unity 6 URP. Black silhouettes, moonlit fog, a windmill with torn sails and a lamplighter with a lantern.

The light shafts are real: they are raymarched through the moon's shadow map at quarter resolution, so the turning sails cut the moonlight on every frame. All geometry is generated by code, one black Shader Graph material carries the wind through every pass, shadows included, and a custom Render Graph pipeline adds fog, a depth-blur ladder and a film print.

Frame budget

Measured in a player build, 3 passes over the loop:

• GTX 1650 Ti laptop, 1080p High: 2.46 ms per frame
• Intel UHD integrated GPU, 720p Low: 11.0 ms per frame

Run the build with -benchmark (or RunBenchmark.bat) to measure it on your own GPU. It writes a CSV next to the exe.

How to run

Unzip the archive and run Nitrate.exe. Windows may show a SmartScreen warning because the build is not signed: click More info, then Run anyway. Fullscreen gives the smoothest playback on laptops with two GPUs.

Controls

• 1 film, 2 bloom, 3 depth blur, 4 beam mode, 5 atmosphere, 6 lit grey view
• V debug views, L High/Low preset, M lantern colour, H HUD
• Mouse wheel: dolly, Space: autoplay, right mouse drag: move the moon

Code and breakdown

Source code (MIT) and a layer-by-layer breakdown: github.com/matbcontrol/Nitrate
Video breakdown: youtu.be/pkpXscO_00M

Work with me

I'm a Unity developer and technical artist. If your game needs a look of its own, custom render passes, or a scene that has to run on weak laptops, I take freelance work: matbcontrol.github.io, kartakcvc@gmail.com