Dissolve

Dissolve drives the mesh’s alpha through a noise texture and an animated cutoff, with a configurable HDR edge glow. It is the workhorse for vanishing characters, teleport effects, ghost spawns, and burn-away props.

Video

A character mesh dissolving away over two seconds as the cutoff animates 0 to 1, with a glowing fire-orange edge band eating through the surface.

features/dissolve/dissolve-burn-away.mp4

Cutoff animated from intact to fully dissolved with an HDR edge glow.

When to use it

Teleports and spawns — fade characters in or out with a glowing edge.
Burn-away — fire or lava-tinted edges.
Magic casting — a high-saturation edge color with a slow cutoff.
Vanishing FX — quick destruction feedback.

Difference from Fade by Distance

Fade by Distance modulates whole-mesh alpha by camera proximity. Dissolve uses a noise threshold, so pixels disappear in irregular patterns. Use Fade for occluders and Dissolve for narrative VFX.

How it works

The shader samples _DissolveTexture per pixel, subtracts _DissolveCutoff, and clips pixels below zero. A second band — pixels within _DissolveEdgeWidth of the threshold — receives the HDR _DissolveEdgeColor. Vertex color can optionally drive the cutoff direction so the dissolve starts from a specific area.

Material fully intact.

Noise-cut holes through the mesh with a glowing fire-orange edge band.

Cutoff 0.0

Cutoff 0.6 + orange edge

The same material intact and mid-dissolve. Drag to compare.

Properties

Inspector label	Shader property	Type	Default	Description
Noise Texture	_DissolveTexture	Texture2D	None	Greyscale noise. Tileable Voronoi or fractal works best.
Cutoff	_DissolveCutoff	Float (0–1)	0.0	0 = intact, 1 = fully dissolved. Animate this value.
Edge Width	_DissolveEdgeWidth	Float (0–0.5)	0.05	Width of the glowing edge band.
Edge Color	_DissolveEdgeColor	Color (HDR)	RGB(2, 0.6, 0.1)	HDR glow tint. Push past 1.0 for bloom.
Edge Power	_DissolveEdgePower	Float (0.1–8)	2.0	Edge falloff sharpness.
Noise Tiling	_DissolveTiling	Vector4	(2,2,0,0)	Noise UV tiling (xy) and offset (zw).
Direction	_DissolveDirection	Enum	Noise	Noise, VertexR, WorldY, or ObjectY.
Screen-Space Noise	_DissolveUseScreenUV	Toggle	Off	Sample noise in screen space for camera-locked patterns.

Usage

Enable Dissolve and assign a tileable noise (Voronoi, Worley, or fractal).
Pick an edge color — fire orange, magic cyan, ghost green.
Drive Cutoff from script or Timeline, 0 to 1 over the desired duration.
For a bottom-up dissolve, set Direction to WorldY.


StartCoroutine(LerpFloat(material, "_DissolveCutoff", 0f, 1.05f, 2.0f));
material.SetColor("_DissolveEdgeColor", new Color(0.3f, 1.4f, 2.8f));

Tips & gotchas

A cutoff above 1.0 fully hides the mesh — animate just past 1 to guarantee no leftover pixels.
Keep the edge color HDR (intensity above 1) for the glow to bloom.
Vertex-color direction needs painted vertex data, which Polybrush makes trivial.
Pairs with Hologram for the canonical sci-fi “rezzing out” shot.

Hologram — dissolve while holo-flickering.
Vertex Colors — drive the dissolve direction.
Emission — the edge glow shares the bloom pipeline.
Hit Effect — pair with dissolve for combat finishers.