Performance comparison between Masked and Additive

Development Rendering
1

Hi,

I’m making a dissolving smoke FX for an stylized VR game running on Oculus Quest and performance is critical. In my case both Additive and Masked blend modes could achieve similar visual effect.

However in the Shader Complexity View, masked mode is mostly green when there’s about 30 particles stacking, whereas additive particles could easily reach to white (extremely bad) region.

It seems that Masked Blend Mode is the clear winner here. However I’ve never seen any performance-related article suggests using this mode. Is there any caveat when using masked mode causing it not being recommended? Is there any situation where additive is the better choice over masked?

I know a lot of people would suggest use only opaque for mobile VR but that just not possible in my case.

2

It is not a fact, that masked will be faster. It depends on device and configuration of your early pre-pass. One layer of additive material will be faster than 1 layer of masked material on Quest. 10 layers? Not sure. Likely not. So profile and check.

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3

Masked, better in all ways.

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