For years I have been looking for a way to get a node similar to Unreal’s DepthFade expression. It all started with Quixel Rebirth that released back in 2019 - they show some Icelandic inspired scenes where that deliciously living fog just looks so damn impressive… and it was just a single freaking 2D plane..
Some black magic I wanted in my toolbox i gotta say. Lightweight and magical.
So I started my journey with OSL, then geometry nodes, then camera shaders… I even started compiling my own version of Blender to add a custom node. But nothing ever came close.
Turns out Blender 5.1 shipped with exactly what I needed: the Raycast node.
So I built BlendFog.
Launch Video / breakdown :
If you know EasyFog for Unreal Engine by William Faucher, you know what BlendFog is.
BlendFog is shader-based fog and atmosphere for Blender. It uses a depth-aware fade driven by a Raycast node, so the fog responds to distance instead of behaving like a flat overlay. The goal was to create something that’s fast, easy to control, and works in both EEVEE and Cycles.
And it finally worked. After 7 years.4 .
Now it is easy to get a distinct visual identity in your atmosphere, while being much easier to art direct compared to volumetrics.
Making a Blade Runner-like skyscraper disappear into the fog becomes almost trivial. Thick volumetric fog around your object is quick to render and animate, while giving you an instant look at the final result is… magical… – Exactly like I hoped it would be.
There is a free version and a premium version comparison chart down below:
| Free Version | Paid Version |
|---|---|
| - Geometry Fading Distance - fog fades out as it approaches solid geometry | - Geometry Fading Distance - fog fades out as it approaches solid geometry |
| - Intersection Feather - removes the hard white seam where the card clips into terrain. A limitation of floating point values. Intended for EEVEE | - Intersection Feather - removes the hard white seam where the card clips into terrain. A limitation of floating point values. Intended for EEVEE |
| - Fog Intensity & Transparency | - Fog Intensity & Transparency |
| - Texture & video support - use the included radial blur texture or drop in your own | - Texture & video support - use the included textures or drop in your own |
| - Emission | - Emission |
| - Asset library - 26 handcrafted ready-to-drop BlendFog objects. | |
| - Camera Fade Distance - fog softens as it nears the camera, no flat plane in your face | |
| - Camera View Angle fade - clean falloff at grazing angles | |
| - Flow Map Support - directional movement with speed, strength and direction control | |
| - Animated Noise - drifting, evolving fog with wind speed and direction | |
| - Normal Map support - Giving the fog depth and better interaction with lights. |
Compatibility
• Blender 5.1+ only (it relies on the Raycast node and can’t read the depth of the scene without it)
• Works in both EEVEE and Cycles
Limitations
-
Intersecting planes in Cycles. The raycast node in Cycles reads each plane as solid geometry, so you’ll see a visible seam where two BlendFog planes intersect. The example shown below shows a rectangle showing through the mist. Workaround: bend or twist the planes, or cut them so they don’t intersect.
-
It’s a card, not a volume.
BlendFog is built for atmosphere, art direction, drifting fog banks, haze and mist layers. It is not a replacement for true volumetric simulation if you need light to physically scatter through a 3D volume. Shadows don’t travel inside the plane, and will not cast shadow on the other side of the plane. God rays and volumetric shadows need to be faked or set up separately. -
Self-overlapping cards.
Stacking many transparent cards on top of each other can introduce sorting artifacts, as with any transparent geometry in Blender. Spacing them out solves it. -
Shadows on the BlendFog objects.
As of yet, there is no easy way to disable incoming shadows on an object. This can give unwanted results, when the BlendFog objects receive shadow. A workaround is to use the emission slider to remove any shadows on the object and dialing down the transparency - It works, but takes some of the fidelity out of the fog. -
Objects set to Dithered (EEVEE)
Some objects with their material’s Render Method set to Blended cause some issues in the raycast node - The fog pops to a hard edge where they cross the card. Switch Render Method on all affected objects using Blended to Dithered instead. The issue mainly came from kitbash objects.
Download/Purchase
Price is $15 on Gumroad for the premium version and there’s currently a launch coupon on Gumroad that brings the price down to $5 for the next two weeks-ish. (Discount valid until 7th of July 2026 11: 59pm GMT +2 and already applied to link)
Gumroad:
If you decide to try it out (free or premium), I’d genuinely love to hear your feedback - node questions, artifacts, feature requests, or anything else.
This is a solo project, and the feedback really helps shape where it goes next.
So… that’s BlendFog.
After all those years of trying workarounds, I still can’t quite believe it’s just a node now.
Don’t forget to share your work using BlendFog with me.
Can’t wait to see what you build with it!
Thanks for reading.
/Jesper
pretty cool! Thank you!