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====== Introduction ======

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Weatherade Snow and Rain System allows you to create snowy/rainy scenes in Unity using a set of shaders and tools that are finely tuned to work together.

Currently it supports **URP** an **Built-in** render pipeline.

The core features of this system:
  * [[weatherade_manual:snow_coverage_instance:global_surface_settings#area_mask|Automatic coverage area occlusion]]
  * [[weatherade_manual:snow_coverage_instance:global_surface_settings#traces|Interactive deformable snow]]
  * [[weatherade_manual:gpu_particle_system|GPU powered snowfall/rain]]

The system itself consists of two main modules: 
  * Coverage Instance
    * [[weatherade_manual:snow_coverage_instance|Snow]]
    * [[weatherade_manual:rain_coverage_instance|Rain]]
  * [[weatherade_manual:gpu_particle_system|GPU Particle System]]

It also includes two helper tools:
  * [[weatherade_manual:tools:total_brush_lite|Total Brush (lite)]] - a vertex and texture painting tool
  * [[weatherade_manual:tools:batch_shader_swapper|Batch Shader Swapper]] - a utility that helps to convert materials automatically

===== Coverage Instance Summary =====
The Coverage Instance module is a kind of global manager that is necessary in every scene for shaders to work correctly. Its main purpose is to collect and store all coverage materials used in a scene, manage their properties globally, and provide a coverage occlusion mask that is used in shaders to avoid coverage in occluded areas, such as the ground surface under a canopy or the interior of a house.

===== GPU Particle System Summary =====
GPU Particle System is a custom GPU powered particle system that is very effective at adding real-time falling snow/rain effects. Particles can collide with objects in the scene, which helps get rid of them in enclosed areas, such as inside a house.