Unity
Curved Silhouette Parallax Occlusion Mapping (CSPOM)
By Frostzone
$15
Rated 0.0/5 from 2 ratings on Unity.
Price history
Recorded standalone sale prices and the latest available store price, in USD. Historical dots use the sale start date and its recorded offer price. Prices can change during a sale; this is not a daily price log. Bundle prices and upcoming offers are excluded. History covers up to the 100 most recent recorded offers.
Lowest recorded standalone price in this history: $7.50. The latest store price is $15.
View 4 recorded prices
| Sale start / price check | Price | Observation |
|---|---|---|
| $15 | Latest store price | |
| $7.50 | Unity New Release Discount 2026-07-22 2026-08-05 | |
| $7.50 | Unity New Release Discount 2026-07-22 2026-08-05 | |
| $15 | Unity First Price 2026-07-22 2026-07-29 |
Sale and bundle history
The 3 most recent recorded offers including this asset. Past offers may no longer be available. Bundle prices cover a package, not this asset alone.
About Curved Silhouette Parallax Occlusion Mapping (CSPOM)
- Art & Visuals > VFX
Curved Silhouette Parallax Occlusion Mapping (CSPOM)
CSPOM is an advanced shader that creates the illusion of complex geometric detail on flat surfaces using heightmaps and ray marching, avoiding the heavy cost of actual mesh tessellation.
Building on traditional POM, CSPOM adds silhouette clipping for convincing cut-out edges and extends the technique to curved or spherical surfaces.
Supports:
URP
HDRP
Created and tested in Unity 6.
Additional Features
Pixel Depth Offset (HDRP)
HDRP supports Pixel Depth Offset (PDO), allowing displaced pixels to write to the depth buffer for:
Improved depth perception
Better interaction with scene geometry
Shadow casting
Ambient Occlusion support
Improved decal projection alignment
Note: URP does not support PDO.
Built From Scratch
A POM implementation written in HLSL and integrated into Shader Graph through reusable subgraphs to make it modular.
Useful both as a production-ready solution and as a reference for developers that are simply interested in advanced shader techniques.
Shader Graph Ready
Modular Shader Graph workflow with included:
Core POM Subgraph
Flat Silhouette Subgraph
Curved Silhouette Subgraph
Combined CSPOM Subgraph
Example Lit Shader Graph
Use the included Lit shader immediately or add the CSPOM node to your own graphs.
View-Angle Step Optimization
Ray march steps are reduced when viewing surfaces head-on and increased only at grazing angles, minimizing unnecessary texture sampling.
Distance-Based LOD
Automatically reduces cost at distance by lowering ray march steps and sampling lower mip levels.
Included
Full HLSL source code for a POM implementation
Shader Graph subgraphs
Example Lit shader
Example materials and textures
Documentation
Demo scene
Limitations
CSPOM simulates geometric detail entirely in the shader; it does not modify the underlying mesh. Because of this, the original mesh silhouette can become visible from certain viewing angles where the actual geometry is exposed, such as when looking toward a sharp corner. This is an inherent limitation of Parallax Occlusion Mapping as a technique, rather than a limitation specific to CSPOM. The effect works best on relatively simple geometry and should not be expected to perfectly reproduce arbitrary 3D geometry.
Curved silhouettes require carefully tuned clipping thresholds. At extreme grazing angles, some visual artifacts may occur as the shader determines where the virtual silhouette should be clipped.
Pixel Depth Offset (HDRP) disables early-Z culling, which can increase the rendering cost of affected pixels.
CSPOM is significantly cheaper than approaches such as dense geometry or tessellation, but it is still a ray-marching technique and therefore has a non-zero performance cost. The cost depends on factors such as screen coverage, viewing angle, ray-march step count, and distance.
CSPOM is an advanced shader that creates the illusion of complex geometric detail on flat surfaces using heightmaps and ray marching, avoiding the heavy cost of actual mesh tessellation.
Building on traditional POM, CSPOM adds silhouette clipping for convincing cut-out edges and extends the technique to curved or spherical surfaces.
Supports:
URP
HDRP
Created and tested in Unity 6.
Additional Features
Pixel Depth Offset (HDRP)
HDRP supports Pixel Depth Offset (PDO), allowing displaced pixels to write to the depth buffer for:
Improved depth perception
Better interaction with scene geometry
Shadow casting
Ambient Occlusion support
Improved decal projection alignment
Note: URP does not support PDO.
Built From Scratch
A POM implementation written in HLSL and integrated into Shader Graph through reusable subgraphs to make it modular.
Useful both as a production-ready solution and as a reference for developers that are simply interested in advanced shader techniques.
Shader Graph Ready
Modular Shader Graph workflow with included:
Core POM Subgraph
Flat Silhouette Subgraph
Curved Silhouette Subgraph
Combined CSPOM Subgraph
Example Lit Shader Graph
Use the included Lit shader immediately or add the CSPOM node to your own graphs.
View-Angle Step Optimization
Ray march steps are reduced when viewing surfaces head-on and increased only at grazing angles, minimizing unnecessary texture sampling.
Distance-Based LOD
Automatically reduces cost at distance by lowering ray march steps and sampling lower mip levels.
Included
Full HLSL source code for a POM implementation
Shader Graph subgraphs
Example Lit shader
Example materials and textures
Documentation
Demo scene
Limitations
CSPOM simulates geometric detail entirely in the shader; it does not modify the underlying mesh. Because of this, the original mesh silhouette can become visible from certain viewing angles where the actual geometry is exposed, such as when looking toward a sharp corner. This is an inherent limitation of Parallax Occlusion Mapping as a technique, rather than a limitation specific to CSPOM. The effect works best on relatively simple geometry and should not be expected to perfectly reproduce arbitrary 3D geometry.
Curved silhouettes require carefully tuned clipping thresholds. At extreme grazing angles, some visual artifacts may occur as the shader determines where the virtual silhouette should be clipped.
Pixel Depth Offset (HDRP) disables early-Z culling, which can increase the rendering cost of affected pixels.
CSPOM is significantly cheaper than approaches such as dense geometry or tessellation, but it is still a ray-marching technique and therefore has a non-zero performance cost. The cost depends on factors such as screen coverage, viewing angle, ray-march step count, and distance.